


Big in Vegas

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/F, F/M, Modern Insert, Polyamory, Rating May Change, Time Travel, discussions of polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2018-09-27 18:55:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 45,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10039991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: It wasn't that long ago that Katie Flynn was your average twenty year old college student, but all of that changed with a flash of light and an earthquake. Now, she's woken up in a different world two hundred and sixty-seven years into the future in a time where nuclear warfare has long since destroyed the world. It doesn't take her long to learn that all this shit is weird, Rad-X tastes like shit, and there's no sunscreen in the Mojave Desert.She thinks she might have been better off staying in bed.





	1. a ripple in time

            The air in the Vault was still and hushed, and it was clear it had been abandoned for a long time, if it had ever been in use at all before. Six had been in a few vaults before, but none of them had made the hair on the back of her neck rise like this one did. There was something _wrong_ hanging heavy in the air here, and she almost wanted to turn around before she could find out what it was. She pauses at the top of the staircase leading down to the third level and shares a look with Boone. He shrugs noncommittally at her, as if to remind her that it was her idea to explore the uncharted Vault. She makes a face him as she unholsters her pistol, swiping her sleeve across her forehead to wipe away the sweat, and dropping into a crouch in one fluid motion. She can hear Boone move behind her as she starts to creep down the staircase, sticking close to the wall. They’d done this before, but something about the whole situation made her nose twitch. She was starting to wish she hadn’t radioed the NCR about the vault. If she left now, they’d ask her all sorts of questions about it. She didn’t think she could lie that convincingly, especially when they had more guns.

            She stopped at the base of the stairs, peering around the corner. It seemed that the vault’s main attraction was here- a massive room, the walls lined with machinery. In the center was a metal platform, surrounded by even more machinery. “You seeing this shit?” she asks, glancing over at Boone. She tried to keep her voice quiet, but it still carried more than she’d have liked. She winced, and hoped the vault was as empty as it appeared. She can just barely make out Boone’s dark eyes behind the sunglasses, but it’s enough for her to catch the look she’s giving him. It’s mostly exasperation, but she can see a little fondness in his gaze, too.

            “No, actually. I’m completely blind,” he deadpans, and Six rolls her eyes at him. She’d gotten used to his humor after several weeks with him in the Wasteland, but that didn’t mean she appreciated it when his sarcasm was directed at her.

            “Right, well. You take one side; I’ll take the other. There’s a lot of tech here. I bet some of it’s useful,” she whispers. Boone nods, and the two of them move to enter the room together. The second Six’s foot touches the smooth metal tile, however, a soft buzzing sound fills the room. She’s alert instantly, eyes scanning the room as she brings her pistol up, but that’s all she has time to do before it’s filled with a bright, white light. Six has time to swear before an explosion rocks the room, throwing her backwards. Her ass hits the floor hard enough to bruise, and she can feel Boone fall next to her. She reaches out blindly, her hand grabbing his wrist, and she’s still swearing by the time the light starts to dim.

            “What the hell?” Boone asks, and she can feel him moving to stand up. She lets go of his arm and blinks rapidly, and she’s not surprised he can see what’s happening before she can. She begrudgingly wishes she had a pair of sunglasses of her own as she forces her eyes to stay open, swiping at them as they water. By the time she can see again, all she can do is echo the same sentiment.

            “What the fuck?” she says, taking another step into the room. There are a couple of alarms blaring somewhere deeper into the vault, and the machinery’s smoking, but it’s the platform in the center that takes up Six’s attention. Sprawled out on the platform is a girl, but it’s the strangest looking girl Six has ever seen, and she knows she wasn’t there a few minutes ago. She shares a look with Boone and steps closer, bringing her pistol up in front of her.


	2. new world wanderer

            The last thing Katie Flynn remembered was an earthquake that knocked her flat on her back. She thinks she remembers a painfully bright light, and she’s sure she hit her head. The first think she’s aware of is the throbbing in her temples and the ache in her lower back, and the second thing she’s aware of is the bright and inescapable light. She lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a whimper and throws her arm over her face. There’s a ringing in her ears and she lies there for a few seconds, her stomach churning uncomfortably.

            She realizes she’s not alone when she feels someone kick her ankle. “Who the fuck are you?” a woman asks, her voice gruff, and Katie lets out another whimper and slowly sits up. She blinks her eyes open slowly, but there’s a rising panic when she fails to recognize where she is or either of the people standing above her. The woman who spoke before is short, with dark red hair and eyes so green that Katie could spend hours looking at them, had the woman not been pointing a pistol at her. The other person standing over her is a tall man, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses and a red beret on his head.

            The woman kicks Katie’s ankles again. “I asked you a question,” she says, flicking the safety off on her pistol. Katie starts to open her mouth to answer, but then her stomach lurches wildly and it’s all she can do to lean over the opposite side of the platform and move her hair out of her face before vomiting everywhere. She thinks she hears the woman sigh over the sound of her retching, but she isn’t sure. When she’s done, she scoots away from the edge, even though that moves her back towards the woman with the gun. She waits a few moments before trying to answer, her hand over her mouth as her stomach settles.

            “My name is Katie. Katie Flynn. Where the hell am I? Who are you?” she asks, but she sounds weaker than she’d like and she wishes she were standing instead of sitting at their feet. She’s afraid to move too much, with that gun pointed at her, though. The woman’s brow furrows, and she opens her mouth to answer, but the man steps in front of her and starts talking instead.

            “We’re in a place called Vault 115. My name is Craig Boone, you can call me Boone, and my friend here goes by Six. The problem is, Katie, the two of us were the only ones in the room until a couple of minutes ago,” he says, putting his hand lightly on Six’s wrist. Six flicks the safety back on and lowers her gun, but she shifts her grip on it and makes it clear that she’s not letting it go anytime soon.

            “What the hell is Vault 115? And if you guys were the only ones here, how did I get here? Where is Vault 115 even at?” she asks, but when Boone reaches down a hand to help her to her feet she takes it.

            “We’re not exactly sure what in the hell Vault 115’s purpose was. Most of the vaults were social experiments conducted by Vault-Tec, and this one is so full of tech that we know it’s not normal. We’re about a four days’ walk from Vegas, and we were hoping you could tell us how you got here,” Six says, speaking up. Katie frowns as she gathers her hair back into a ponytail.

            “Vegas? As in Las Vegas, Nevada?” she asks, and there’s a sinking feeling in her gut that solidifies with each passing second.

            “Well, yeah. Or at least, that’s what it used to be called before the Great War. Now we call it New Vegas. You’ve got to know about Vegas,” Six says, crossing her arms over her chest, but Katie has to take a moment, burying her head in her hands.

            “All right, I understood all of those words separately, but I have no idea what in God’s name you’re talking about,” she says, when she finally surfaces. Six looks a little amused by the whole situation, but Katie’s just trying to fight back the panic.

            “How the hell don’t you know what I’m talking about? Where the fuck are you from?” Six asks.

            “I’m from a the middle of nowhere, Tennessee. Up until ten minutes ago, that’s where I was. I’ve never heard of New Vegas, I don’t know what fucking war you’re on about, and I still have no idea how I got to Nevada of all places!” she said, and it was only when Boone reached out and put his hand on her shoulder that Katie realized she was yelling. She flushed and took a deep breath.

            “…You don’t know about the War?” Boone asks, his head tilted to the side.

            “I told you, I have no idea what war you’re talking about!” she yells, and she turns and takes a few steps away, taking deep breaths to calm herself down. Yelling at the people with guns probably wasn’t the smartest idea she’s ever had, but Six only trades a look with Boone and nods as Katie turns back around, looking apologetic.

            “What year do you think it is, Katie?” Six asks softly. Katie’s brow furrows, but Boone nods encouragingly at her. She reaches up to let her hair down.

            “It’s 2017. Is this a trick?” she answers, shaking her hair out. She can tell by the expressions on their faces that she’s wrong, somehow.

            “That’s…well. It would seem you’re a little behind the times,” Boone tells her, and Katie freezes, her hand still lost in the tangle of her blue hair.

            “What do you mean, Boone?” Katie asks, very slowly, as if somehow that will make whatever it is that’s about to happen less terrifying.

            “He means the year is 2281. All this tech over here probably has some answers for us, but I’d say you’re a long way from home,” Six says. Katie sighs heavily.

            “All right, that’s cute. This was a fun little prank or whatever, but it’s not funny anymore,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. Six shrugs and finally holsters her pistol, walking over to some of the machinery. There’s a terminal on a table at the far wall that probably has most of the answers, but Six isn’t in any hurry to be that unguarded around Katie, even with Boone there.

            “Do either of us look like the type to do anything like this as a prank?” Boone asks her, and Six has to admit that she feels a little sorry for the girl.

            “This can’t be real, though. There’s no way in hell I’ve traveled two hundred and something years into the future. That’s just…impossible,” she says, but there’s a rising note of hysteria in her voice and Boone finds himself wishing he was anywhere but here. Katie, fortunately, seems to realize where her panic is taking her, and she crouches down, her head in her hands as she takes several deep breaths. It’s only then that Six feels comfortable enough walking over to the terminal and booting it up. She skims over most of the information while Boone crouches next to Katie, somewhat awkwardly trying to comfort her.

            After several long minutes of reading, Six pushed the chair back from the table and stretched. “Well, Vault-Tec knew what they were doing, I’ll give them that much,” she announced. Katie and Boone both looked up as Six walked towards them.

            “Well? What did you find out?” Katie asks anxiously, standing up. Boone stands up as well, but he leans back against the wall and watches the two of them.

            “You are the proud product of a Vault-Tec experiment. Surprisingly, it didn’t go horrifyingly wrong. Or maybe it did, we’ve not left the vault yet. Long story short, they had theories about time travel they wanted to test out. I didn’t understand much of the technical jargon, but maybe you have. Have you heard of this thing called the multi-verse theory?” Six asks. Boone doesn’t miss the way Katie’s eyes light up as she nods.

            “Yeah, that’s a theory that there are multiple universes, one for every choice ever made. For every choice you make, there’s a universe where you made the opposite choice. Did they try to prove it, or something?”

            “Well, sort of. They wanted to prove that time travel was possible, but they were afraid of unraveling the fabric of space and time or whatever if they brought someone from our past. So, not only are you from the past, you’re also from a different universe. I’m not entirely sure how yours differs from ours, but this sounds like it’ll be a fun experience for everyone here,” Six explains, falsely cheerful.

            Katie puts her head in her hands again and takes several moments to compose herself. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” she asks, and it’s partly rhetorical. She knows there’s probably no way in hell that they could get the machines working in a way that could send her back home, but there was nothing for her out in the Mojave either.

            “You could come with us. I’ve got enough Rad-X to get you to Vegas, and the King owes me some favors. I’m sure he could get us all into Vegas. I’ve got some business to take care of there, and after that we can just go wherever the wind will take us,” Six says, and Katie would be lying if she said that the offer wasn’t tempting.

            “All right, I guess. There’s nothing else for me to do,” she answers, after a few seconds. She takes another look around the vault and wonders why she was the one who was warped through time. Six pulls her pack off of her back and starts rummaging through it.

            “What are we going to tell the NCR, Six?” Boone asks. Six tenses up for a moment, but then she keeps rummaging for the Rad-X.

            “We’ll tell them it’s full of broken old tech,” she says, pulling out a worn bottle. She shakes two of the tablets out into her hand and hands them off to Katie, who takes them warily. “Is there anything you’re bringing to the group, by the way? Any skills at all?” Six asks.

            “I can write a pretty damn good essay, and I can sing. I can draw, too, if I put my mind to it, and I’m not too bad at cooking. None of that will help keep us alive, though,” Katie says, and then she tosses the tablets back, making a face immediately. The tablets tasted horrific, bitter and chalky, and the taste was overwhelming with the way it coated her tongue. It was Boone who came to her rescue, wordlessly passing her his canteen. She nodded her thanks to him, swishing some water around in her mouth. It helped, but it didn’t get rid of the taste entirely.

            “Well. We’ll say we brought you along for the cooking. I’ll give you this extra pistol of mine- keep it on you at all times. We’ll probably need to get you a new outfit before we leave Freeside, but that’ll be fine for now. Let’s get going,” Six says, handing over her 10mm and a handful of ammo. She had plenty more ammo, but she hoped they wouldn’t have to use it. Neither of her traveling companions had anything else to say, so Six turned around and lead the way up, towards the vault’s exit.


	3. ride me down easy

            The sun outside was blindingly bright, and Katie raised her arm up to block it, her eyes watering. A wave of heat rushed into the vault as the door rolled open, and even though she’d braced herself for it, Six swore. Boone was the only the only one who seemed mostly unaffected, something that left both Katie and Six envying him.

            Once her eyes adjusted, Katie looked down at her shirt in dismay, taking the time to do a quick check. Her phone was a solid and comforting presence in her back pocket, and she felt her charger in the other one. She was suddenly glad that she’d invested the money in a high-tech solar powered charger that morning. She had a feeling she wouldn’t miss the thirty bucks.

            “Hey, Six? You got a knife?” she asks, picking at the long sleeves on her shirt. It was breathable cotton, and while it’d probably offer valuable protection against the sun, she didn’t think she could stand the heat. Six looked up from where she’d been kneeling, petting Rex.

            “Yeah, why?” Six asked, pulling a switchblade out of her pocket.

            “I think I should make this into a tank top. I’ll get a heatstroke if I don’t,” she answers. Six shrugged, tossing her the knife.

            “If you want to chop up your clothes, that’s your business. It gets mighty cold at night, though,” she warns. Katie frowned, catching the knife neatly.

            “Well, what else am I supposed to do? Walk around with my shirt off? Unless you’ve got a handy bottle of sunscreen, that’s a bad idea,” she retorts.

            “Hand me the damn knife. I’ve got an extra shirt you can wear tonight if it gets too cold,” Boone says, directing a glare at Six, who merely shrugs in response. Katie passes over the knife and does her best to stand still while Boone cuts at her sleeves.

            “So, why are we going to Vegas?” Katie asks, turning her gaze away from the knife. At least Boone’s hands were steady- she wasn’t too afraid of the knife slipping.

            “The man who shot me in the head is waiting in Vegas. This has been a long time coming. Come to think of it, maybe I could use your help,” Six answers, a half-feral grin on her face. Katie’s expression changed rapidly, and she held up one hand, careful not to jostle the arm that Boone was working on.

            “Wait a second, you were shot in the head? And how the hell could I help with whatever revenge you’ve got planned?” she demands.

            “Yeah. I’m a courier- I was the sixth one hired for the job. This bastard, Benny, steals the package I’m supposed to deliver and shot me in the head. I was left for dead in a little town called Goodsprings, but the good doctor there patched me up and kept me alive. The problem is, Benny’s gonna recognize me. There ain’t nothing we can do to stop that, and I’m not about to ask Boone here to risk his reputation for me. But Benny won’t recognize you. I’ve not got a solid plan, yet, but I’m sure we’ll think of one,” Six tells her, and there’s a haunted look that comes over her face for a moment. Boone switches to the other arm, letting the sleeve fall onto the dusty ground.

            “Yeah, I’m sure that’s why you’ve waited so long to head into Vegas,” he remarks, mostly under his breath, but Six hears him anyway.

            “Hey, there ain’t nothing wrong with having a solid plan before marching into a casino to kill the man in charge. We need to make sure nothing’ll go wrong,” she retorts. Boone lets the matter drop- he knows by now what will put Six into one of her moods, but he’s seen the way she stares at the gates to Vegas, and he knows she’s one favor away from walking through them. He finishes cutting through Katie’s sleeve and flicks the knife closed, tossing it back to Six, who catches it almost absentmindedly.

            “Well, I guess we should head on out. No use in wasting daylight,” Six says, and turn turns abruptly and heads off. Katie shares a look with Boone, who only shrugs apologetically and starts walking. Katie follows him, putting her hair up again. Rex trots alongside them, his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he pants. The sun beats down on the back of her shoulders, and she knows that she’s going to end up sunburnt before the day was over with.

* * *

            As it turns out, she can only keep pace with Six and Boone for about an hour. The heat’s too much for her, even though Boone keeps passing her his canteen, and her feet hurt, even though they’ve slowed their pace for her. She knows she’s about to do something stupid, but after a while, she thinks she just can’t walk anymore and slows to a stop. It takes them a couple of seconds to notice, but when they do, the two of them spin around. Six crosses her arms and glares at Katie. Boone sighs, and he wonders what the problem is _this_ time.

            “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Six asks, and Boone sighs again. He thinks it might be a little easier if she weren’t so abrasive, and he can see Katie’s face twist down into a frown, but he learned a long time ago there was no controlling Six’s mouth.

            “I need to take a break. I can’t keep up with you guys. I’m not used to walking this much,” Katie says, trying to be as patient as possible, but the heat’s getting to her and Six’s attitude isn’t helping.

            “Well, _princess_ , suck it up. I’m not stopping, and I’m not carrying you either,” Six snaps. Katie flinches, but she marches over to a nearby rock and sits down, her arms crossed stubbornly over her chest.

            “Fine, then. I guess I’ll just wait here to die,” she retorts, and Boone brings his hand up to his forehead. He knows Six’ll march off and leave her, and he knows there’s no way Katie will survive in the desert, and he doesn’t think she can walk much farther. It’s with a heavy sigh that he slings his rifle off of his back, passes it over to Six, and walks over to Katie.

            “I’m giving you two options. You can either get on my back, or I’m tossing you over my shoulder. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to you two argue,” he says. She looks at him apprehensively, her gaze darting to Six.

            “Boone! You never offer to carry me,” Six complains. Katie stands, brushing the dust off of her jeans. Boone nods at her, turning around and bracing himself.

            “Look, Six, you can walk yourself. She can’t go much farther, you’re too stubborn to stop, and I’m not dealing with this,” he says, and it takes a couple of attempts before Katie can clamber awkwardly onto his back. He shifts her just a little, and he can feel her hesitating before she wraps her arms around his chest and settles her chin on his shoulder. She’s small enough that her weight isn’t a problem- Six has made him lug heavier stuff around before, but he hopes she’ll ask to get down after she’s rested for a little while. He pretends not to see the hurt look that Six flashes him.

* * *

          Katie finds out after about ten minutes of clinging to Boone’s back that the silence is almost unbearable. She tries to think of all sorts of things to keep herself distracted, but the end everything she thinks of just makes her think of home. “I’ve got some music I can play,” she says, eventually.

            “Do whatever you want,” Six mutters from up ahead, sullenly. Katie rolls her eyes, but she fishes her phone out of her pocket. She’s got an eclectic collection, including music from all the way back in the fifties and sixties. She’s also got a fair amount of newer, more popular music.

            “Does anyone have any preferences?” she asks, trying to be cheerful. Six ignores her, and she’s a little surprised when Boone responds.

            “Does your world even have the same music?” he asks, shifting his grip on her. For a horrible second, she’s afraid he’s going to drop her, but it never happens.

            “I…don’t know. What kind of music do you have here?” she asks.

            “The same music we’ve always had. Everything that survived the war,” Six says, from up ahead. That doesn’t give her anything to go on, so she just presses shuffle. An old Elvis Presley song starts to play, and apparently it’s shocking enough that Six stops in her tracks, spinning around to face them so suddenly that Boone almost runs into her.

            “I know that song! The King has it. Do you know who sings it? Why do people worship him? Or was it even the same, back in your world?” she asks, and for a moment she doesn’t look like the roughened mercenary she is, and instead looks almost like a kid on Christmas morning.

            “It’s just an Elvis song, nothing too weird. What do you mean, about worship?” Katie asks. Boone’s the one who starts walking again, startling her enough to leave her grasping to hang on. She pretends like she doesn’t hear his chuckle as she slides her phone back into her pocket and glances at Six, who’s walking beside them.

            “Well, the King says everyone worshipped him. They tried to be like him. There’s an entire building in Freeside dedicated to just that- it’s the King’s headquarters. There was probably some other shit, but I stopped listening about halfway through ‘cause I was paying attention to Rex,” she tells her, and Katie has to smile to herself.

            “It wasn’t worship, not really, but a good Elvis impersonator could make a lot of money. Elvis was pretty popular when he died, and, well, I don’t know. It just became a thing that people did. They dressed up like him, tried to talk like him and sing like him, and it was entertainment. They still do it. Or did, I guess. Anyway, people could make a lot of money as an Elvis impersonator,” she explains. Six’s face falls, just a little.

            “I thought it was cooler when they worshipped him,” she mumbles, and Katie laughs, letting her chin rest on Boone’s shoulder again as the lapse into silence, the music playing on in the background. Occasionally, Six would ask her about the songs that came on, but for the most part they traveled in silence.

* * *

            Katie had never felt more relief than when Six declared they were stopping for the night. There was no warning, either- the woman just stopped and dropped her pack and Boone's things on the ground. Rex takes his spot at her feet, laying down and wagging his tail. Katie flopped down on the ground- she’d been walking for the last hour and a half- and gave a soft groan of approval. The dusty ground was hard and uncomfortable, and in a couple days she’d probably start crying if she couldn’t get some sort of bath, but right now, she was going to take what she could get. Even Boone let out a soft sound of relief, reaching down for the pack and pulling out a tent and a sleeping bag. “I’ll set up tonight,” he offers.

            Six’s mood shifts again. “Fine,” she says, but Katie and Boone could both tell that it wasn’t fine as she dug another sleeping bag out of the pack and headed off a short distance. She was just far enough away to let them know she was pissed, although Katie couldn’t figure out why. Boone only sighed and shook out the canvas for the tent.

            “I guess she really was pissed that I offered to carry you,” he says, and Katie shrugs, getting back up on her feet.

            “Do you need me to do anything?” she asks. He looks up at her, taking off his sunglasses. He looked a little strange without them- Katie had grown used to seeing him wearing them.

            “Can you start a fire?” he asks. She shakes her head, so he holds out the tent towards her. She accepts it a little hesitantly. “It’s not too difficult to set up, and I can help you if you need me to,” he says, giving her a small smile. She nods, picking up the poles, and taking a few steps away.

            She immerses herself in the task ahead. It takes her a few minutes to figure out how the poles fit together, and how they fit into the tent, but ones she finds the slit in the canvas, she gets it together pretty quickly. It’s only when she ducks inside to test it that it all comes crashing down around her- literally. She lets out a muffled sound of dismay, and Boone looks up from the fire. Katie thrashes around inside the canvas, her breath hitching in panic with the more she struggles to find the opening. It’s all he can do to hide his laughter as he approaches, reaching out and helping her to the exit.

            “Having problems?” he asked, his amusement thinly veiled. She pouts up at him, her hair all messed up.

            “It was all going so well,” she complained, crawling out from underneath the heap of canvas.

            “It’ll do that unless you get the supports just right. Here, let me show you,” he says, kneeling down next to her. It takes them a little longer to get it set up, but the fire’s already going and Katie finds that it’s a little easier to laugh with Boone when Six isn’t glaring daggers at her every time she glances up at the other woman.

* * *

            Katie volunteers to cook, and her confidence lasts until she sees the ingredients she’s presented with. There’s a couple of chunks of meat, and she absolutely refuses to ask what they’re from. There’s also a box of mac and cheese, a box of Sugar Bombs, some mutfruit, carrots, apples, corn, and a few pinto beans. She’s got a frying pan and a pot to work with, and that’s all that she’s got at her disposal. She starts to ask how they expect her to work with this, but if they can do it, she figures she can too, so she rolls up her sleeves at gets to work. It takes her almost an hour and a half, and by the end she’s not sure exactly what this is, but it’s not bad. She’d fried the meat as best she could, and then cooked with the carrots, corn, and beans. She’s used to more spices, so it’s a lot blander than she’d like.

            “You really meant it when you said you could cook,” Boone says, after his first bite. Katie narrows her eyes, trying to find out if he means it, but by the expression on his face she thinks that he does.

            “Christ, what do you usually eat?” she asks.

            “Burnt meat that Six forgets in the fire,” he answers, and Katie makes a face. Eventually, Six comes over, sitting down on the opposite side of the fire and helping herself. She starts talking, to both of them, this time, and Katie thinks that maybe whatever mood the courier was in had changed. Boone acts like nothing had been wrong, so Katie followed his lead, although she met Six’s gaze more often than normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao i wrote this in like two hours so the pacing may be off, there's probably some typos, but this is what happens when you don't have a beta. 
> 
> hope you enjoy it anyway- leave a comment and let me know!


	4. five hundred miles away from home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will put a warning for a panic attack that katie has- it's brief, it's not described in detail, but if that bothers you, proceed with caution. there's also some references to past abuse/trauma, but it's nothing too graphic or anything, just a few words mentioning that it used to happen

            Six returned to her separate campsite to sleep, and Katie wasn’t convinced that the problems between them were over. There was something in the other woman’s eyes that made her nervous, but she wasn’t looking for a fight and she had no idea what Six would find acceptable, so as soon as she finished eating she stoked the fire and ducked into the tent. She knew she should probably leave her shoes on, but she peeled them off anyway, tossing the ratty old converse into the corner of the tent. Her feet were swollen, she had blisters on both of her heels, and she almost cried at the sudden pain that throbbed through them. Instead, she sat down on the blanket Boone had laid out for her and tried to massage some of the pain out of them. This is how she was sitting when Boone ducked into the tent as well. He glanced down, grimacing in sympathy at the state of her feet.

            “You’re going to need to lance those blisters. We’ll bandage them up, but otherwise they’re just going to get bigger,” he tells her, and Katie flops backwards on the blanket, letting out a long, low groan.

            “I don’t suppose I could convince you to just kill me now?” she asks, glancing up at him. He’s got a wry grin on his face, and she hopes at least he’s not miserable.

            “Not quite. You might have better luck with Six, although she likes to play with her food before eating it. You’re probably better off just dealing with the blisters,” he says, and Katie smiles despite herself as she sits up.

            “Well, I’m sure this is going to be absolutely fantastic,” she grumbles. She has a fleeting moment before she starts worrying about infection as Boone pulls out a knife from his pocket.

            “I’ll help. You’ve probably never had to do anything like this before,” he offers.

            “Boone, you’re a goddamn saint,” she tells him, as he reaches into his pack and pulls out some bandages and an old- but clean- rag.

            “I don’t know if you’ll feel the same in a couple of minutes,” he warns, and she hesitantly stretches her foot out towards him, leaning back on her elbows.

            “It’s just a blister. How bad can it be?” she says. She can’t remember the last time she actually had a blister- she thinks it might have been when she first started wearing heels. She’s glad she hadn’t been wearing them when she arrived.

            “Maybe you’re tougher than you seem,” he teases, and Katie rolls her eyes. She tries not to flinch when she feels him grab her foot gently, shifting so he can get a better grip. She can’t decide whether it’d be better to look away or not, and before she knows it the tip of the knife is slicing through the blister. She winces, but it doesn’t really hurt until he mops at the liquid. She makes a face, but she feels a lot better as he bandages it neatly.

            “I was, admittedly, expecting this to be worse,” she comments, moving her foot off his lap and offering him the other one.

            “Six bitched for thirty minutes the last time she got blisters,” Boone tells her, and Katie can’t hold back a laugh.

            “Well, that doesn’t seem too surprising,” she says, as he cuts through the other one. The cold air hitting the raw skin makes her draw a sharp breath in through her teeth, but the pain is over almost before it registers. Boone cleans it as best as he can before bandaging it neatly, and she sits up, drawing her feet close to her and wrapping her arms around her knees. Boone wipes his knife off on the rag and closes it, slipping it back into his pocket. He glances up at her as he stuffs the rag back in a different part of his bag.

            “You should get some rest. We’ve got a long day of walking ahead of us tomorrow,” he says. She swallows heavily- she’s not sure she’ll be able to get any sleep at all.

            “Hey, Boone. Would if bothered you if I played some music until I fell asleep? It’ll cut off in about an hour, and if it bothers you I won’t. I just…I usually do it at home,” she says, nervously fidgeting with the hair-tie around her wrist.

            “It won’t bother me. Go ahead and play your music,” he tells her, his voice soft. She nods, fishing her phone out of her pocket. She’d charged her phone earlier, while they were walking, so at least she didn’t have to worry about it going dead. She dimmed the brightness and turned on the music, making sure it’d turn off. She lies back on the blanket, pulling the edges around herself. Boone’s given her a jacket of his to use as a pillow, and she stares up at the canvas of the tent. She wonders, for a moment, if all of this is real, and she tries to convince herself that it isn’t. It’ll be easier, she thinks, if she could wake up the next morning back in her bed in her dorm. She knows it’s never that easy, though, as she drifts off to sleep.

* * *

             _It's a pretty autumn day, the sun shining over campus, and Katie had just finished her classes for the day. She didn’t have any for the next couple of days- she wasn’t quite sure if it was fall break or if it was the weekend. She also couldn’t quite recall what she’d been doing a few minutes ago, but it was easy enough to chalk that up to in-class boredom. She took her phone out of her pocket to check the time. She had plenty of time left in the day, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it. It wasn’t like she had any friends to go out with. She could almost recall one of the strangest dreams she’d ever had- she must have fallen asleep in class. She remembered flashes: the desert sun beating down on her shoulders, a man in a red beret grinning at her, and the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen pouting playfully at her. In the end, she decides that whatever she’d been dreaming about wasn’t too important._

_She made her way back to her dorm. She didn’t remember the walk back, only that she thought about it and then she was there. Something felt off, but the day felt nice enough that she wasn’t willing to complain as she tossed her backpack down on her bed, picking up the duffle bag from her closet. She usually tried to avoid trips home, but with the sun shining so prettily outside, she almost felt like it’d be worth it. The drive home was nothing she hadn’t seen before- there were a few miles of monotonous interstate before she hit the twisting, curvy backroads. It, too, passed by in blur, but it always did. Before she knew it, she was pulling into her driveway, and she can see the dog jumping on the screen door._

_Her mother is sitting in the recliner when she walks in the front door. She smiles up at her, reaching up for a hug, and Katie can’t help but lean down and give her one. She can’t remember the last time her mother smiled, or the last time she didn’t have a drink in her hand, but all she’s got is a bottle of water next to her. Her father is standing in the kitchen, and he hugs her too. For the first time, his hug feels like safety and comfort instead of a trap that could spring shut at any moment. He hands her a glass of the sweet tea that she used to love as a kid, until she realized he only made it when he tried to hit her. He hasn’t tried that in a long time- she thinks he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to call the police, but it still leaves a bitter taste in her mouth when she thinks about it. The tea tastes as sweet as it used to, and Katie thinks that maybe things at home have finally gotten better._

_Her mother and father cook dinner together. It’s spaghetti, one of Katie’s favorites, and there’s no arguing while it happens. Katie starts to think that it’s a miracle. When she sits down at the table with the two of them, the cat curling around her legs and the dog lying in the corner, she knows that it is. It’s then that she wakes up._

* * *

 

            When she first wakes up, she’s not sure where she is, only that the only thing between her and the big, open sky is a thin sheet of canvas. She sits up so fast it makes her head spin, and she feels like the walls of the tent are closing in on her, suffocating her. She’s shaking, and she thinks she’s crying too, and it’s only then that she remembers where she is and what’s happened. She thinks she might be crying because there’s definitely no way for her to have a nice family now, too.

            Beside her, Boone wakes to the sound of her sobs. His first instinct is to reach for his gun, but he recognizes the sounds he’s hearing with his hand halfway to his rifle. He lets it fall to his side as he sits up, shifting and moving closer to her. “Katie? Katie, are you all right?” he asks, reaching out towards her. He thinks better of it and drops his arm, but she jumps anyway and buries her face in her arms, still shaking and sobbing. She can barely breathe, and her ribs _ache_ from the force of her sobs, and she thinks there’s no way in hell she’ll be able to come out of this okay. That’s what she thinks about all of her panic attacks, though, and she’s come out of all of them mostly fine.

            “Katie, what’s wrong?” Boone asks, his voice urgent now. She tries to give him an answer, but he can’t understand her through her sobs. He wonders if he should go get Six, but then he remembers that she’s even worse with feelings than he is. This time he reaches out and touches her, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. It seems like that’s all it takes because she moves suddenly, twisting around and burying her face in his chest. He can feel the deep breaths she’s trying to take and her sobs start to taper off, but she’s still trembling.

            “I’m sorry,” she gasps, and it’s the first thing she says that he can understand. He wraps his arms around her, one hand rubbing soothing circles between her shoulder blades.

            “It’s okay. Just talk to me, tell me what’s wrong,” he encourages. He feels her take a few deep breaths- she can breathe again, finally, and he’s a lot less worried about that.

            “It was nothing. I just…It was nothing. I’m sorry,” she says, again, but she presses herself closer to him, her hands fisting in his shirt, and he wonders how long it’s been since someone’s tried to comfort her like this.

            “I won’t push, if you don’t want to tell me,” he says, because he remembers the way Six pushed him for information about Carla and Bitter Springs. Katie nods against his chest, and she takes a couple more deep breaths before she pulls back, wiping at her eyes.

            “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just…forgot where I was, when I woke up,” she says, and her voice is still thick with tears.

            “It happens to the best of us,” he says, cautiously. She nods, sniffing, and wipes at her eyes again. Her phone goes off then, making both of them jump. _All Star_ by Smash Mouth starts playing, letting her know it’s exactly 6:35a.m. and time to take her birth control. She fumbles to grab her phone and shut the alarm off, disabling it permanently. She swears, forgetting the dream for the time being.

            “Something else wrong?” he asks, wary of upsetting her.

            “Not really. I don’t think it’ll be a big deal here. It wasn’t a big deal back home, either, though,” she says. She’s thankful she doesn’t need any other medication; she doubted there were many substitutes in the Mojave.

            “We should probably start packing up. It won’t be long before Six decides to head out,” Boone says, after a few moments. Katie nods, slipping her phone and the charger into her pockets as she stands. She does what she can to help Boone pack up the blankets and the sleeping bag, and she manages to dismantle the tent while he fixes a box of macaroni and cheese over the fire. She’s never heard of the brand before, and it’s two hundred years out of date, but it’s not the worst thing she’s ever eaten. Six joins them as soon as she sees they’re out of their tent, and if she notices how red and puffy Katie’s eyes are, she doesn’t mention it. Once they’ve eaten and finished packing everything up, they head out, the hot Mojave sun beating down on their backs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter's just going to be filler but hopefully i can squeeze in some more katie/six interaction after this~


	5. on the road again

            Katie couldn’t stand the silence for long at all. They’d only been walking for a few minutes when she started to play her music, and it wasn’t long after that that Six slowed enough to walk next to her. The courier shared a look with Boone and he went on ahead, taking point. “So, Katie. I have some questions. About your world,” Six says.

            “All right. I’ll try to answer as best as I can,” Katie replies, glancing over at the redhead.

            “Good. So, first thing’s first. Why the fuck is your hair blue? I mean, is that normal where you’re from? No one here has blue hair. At least, not anyone that I’ve seen.”

            Katie grins, trying to hold back a laugh. She doesn’t want to offend Six, especially considering how many weapons she’s carrying. “Sort of? I dyed it- my hair is naturally brown. Hair dye is pretty common. My parents hated it, but it’s my hair, and it’ll grow out anyway,” she answers. She takes a moment to run her hand through her hair, and then grimaces. It feels oily already, and she knows it’ll be awhile before she can wash it properly.

            “Why’d you dye it?” Six asks. Curiosity looks good on her- makes her look a lot younger and a lot nicer.

            “I got tired of the brown. Plus, it pissed my parents off. After some of the shit they’ve done to me, I figured I’d get back at them as best as I could.”

            “Do you miss them? Your parents?”

            “Not really. They weren’t good parents. I think the worst thing about this is that I won’t ever be able to have a better relationship with them. Not that they deserve it.”

            “Well, you’re with us now. That’s got to count for something,” Six says cheerfully. There’s something in her eyes that makes Katie think she’s got some ghosts of her own, but Katie doesn’t mention it.

            “Anything else you want to ask? Or has your curiosity been sated for now?” Katie asks, grinning. Six slings her arm around Katie’s shoulders, making her flinch, and grins.

            “So, what’s with the outfit? I’ve seen some Pre-War outfits lying around, and all of the women wore dresses and shit. I’ve only see a few pairs of pants like that for men,” Six asks, glancing up and down Katie’s body. Katie can feel her cheeks flush, and she doesn’t think it’s from the hot desert sun.

            “I guess our culture just evolved differently than yours. I mean, you guys didn’t even produce new music after the 1960s. It makes sense that women still wore a lot of dresses. I never really wore them. I sit with my legs too far apart for that,” Katie answers, grinning.

            “So does Six,” Boone says, from up ahead, and Six definitely blushes. They lapse into a companionable silence after that, Six jogging ahead to take the lead. Boone drops back and walks closer to Katie, mostly so he’ll know if she needs help.

* * *

            They stop with the sun directly overhead for lunch. Katie’s feet are killing here and by the time they stop, she’s so hungry it aches. She scarfs down her food, barely tasting it, and then she unties her converse and yanks them off. There are a few more blisters starting to form on her feet, and the ones Boone took care of last night hurt so bad she almost cries.

            Six takes pity on her and says they’ll rest for the next hour. Katie almost cries at that too, flopping down in the dirt and throwing one arm over her eyes. Six laughs and stretches out beside her, her back propped up against her pack. “So, Katie. How’d you make money back home?” she asks. Katie groans and sits up a little. Six scoots over, giving her some room to prop herself up next to her. She leans back against the pack gladly, her shoulder pressed against Six’s.

            “I could only work part-time, because of school and all that shit, so I just had a job at the McDonald’s on campus. I had a job before that where I worked at a daycare, helped clean up and all that. Working at McDonald’s was, honestly, the worst,” she answered.

            “It couldn’t have been that bad,” Six scoffed, and Katie looked up at her, a wry grin on her face.

            “Oh, trust me, it was fucking horrible. I got screamed at for three hours because a lady didn’t want pickles on her hamburger,” Katie retorts, making a face.

            “I got hired to deliver a platinum chip and got shot in the head. You got anything to top that?” she asks.

            “Definitely not. The worst thing that ever happened to me was this bitch that decided we didn’t give her enough whipped cream and threw her coffee at me. She specifically ordered it without whipped cream. I got second-degree burns because of her, and she got a free fucking coffee while I waited for the ambulance. If I hadn’t needed the money, I would have quit,” she says. The burns had only healed about seven months ago- Katie had thought about suing but she was a poor college student, so she didn’t.

            “There’s no way that happened. Not in a Pre-War world,” Six scoffs. Katie reaches for the hem of her shirt, ready to take it off and show Six the scars when she remembers Boone is there. She glances over at him almost guiltily, but she’s already pulling her shirt over her head by the time she thinks that she shouldn’t. He doesn’t seem too uncomfortable, but there’s a faint blush on his cheeks that almost makes her smile.

            “Look, here’s the scars for proof,” Katie said, pointing them out. Usually she’d be self-conscious about them, but Six has a scar on the right side of her face- an ugly one that makes her think it’s where she got shot, and another one going down her left cheekbone.

            “Wait, holy shit, that’s the kind of bras you’ve got back home? We get this shit,” Six says, and she unzips and unfastens the armored leather jacket she’s wearing. Katie’s a little astounded at how fast the other woman’s fingers move before her jacket’s hanging open, revealing an old and stained cropped tank top. It’s at this point that Boone sighs heavily and turns his back, muttering something under his breath that Katie can’t quite hear. Based on his body language, she assumes that’s a good thing.

            “Jesus, that can’t even provide that much support!” Katie exclaims, ignoring Boone. She can’t quite believe how she just took her shirt off in front of him like that- she’s usually a lot more modest.

            “It doesn’t. Sometimes I wonder why I wear it. But do you have any idea how hard it is to be sexy in this thing?” Six says, shifting so she can face Katie.

            “Christ, I can’t imagine. This isn’t even one of my sexy bras. This is my comfort bra that I wore for good luck on my exam,” she replies.

            “God. Maybe I need to try and raid a department store or something. Do you think any of them still have sexy underwear? I want some sexy underwear,” Six says, and her hands move back to the front of her jacket. It takes her a little longer to fasten it back up, and Katie’s dressed before Six is. Boone waits a few more minutes before turning back around, a fond but exasperated expression on his face.

            “If you find some, share it with me. It looks like I’ll be stuck here for a while, if not forever,” Katie says, and something in her stomach tightens. There wasn’t much for her back home, but it was home nonetheless, and the idea that she may never go back was disconcerting, to say the least.

            Six noticed. She reached out, putting one hand on Katie’s shoulder. As a rule, she never attempted to comfort people. She was bad at it, and she knew it, but she couldn’t just sit there and not do anything. She recognized the look in Katie’s eye. It was Boone, though, that came over and crouched down next to her, his hand on her other shoulder. “We’ll try to find a way to get you back home,” he tells her. Six isn’t sure how true that is- they both have priorities that are more important that finding someone who could make sense of all of that mess back in Vault 115, much less fixing it.

            Katie frowns, shifting. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, because I do, but don’t make it a big deal. There’s not much for me back there anyway, and I don’t want to inconvenience you guys any more than I already have,” she says, looking down.

            “It’s okay to want to go back home, Katie. It’s your home. It’s not an inconvenience for us,” Boone tells her, his voice soft and soothing. Katie feels some sort of emotion welling up inside of her, and part of her wants to cry. She can’t remember the last time someone seemed to care so much about something she wanted.

            “I don’t even know if I want to go back home. The only thing that makes me want to go back at all is the fact that it’s home, for whatever that’s worth. And it ain’t worth a lot,” she sighs. Six takes this moment to run her hand along Katie’s back, in between her shoulder blades, and she’s a little surprised when she leans into her touch.

            “We’ll at least try to give you the option. It might be awhile, we’ll have to find someone who can understand the tech in the vault, much less fix it. But until then, you’ve got at least two friends in the Mojave,” Six tells her, her voice gruff. Katie’s lips quirk up in a grin as Rex barks nearby.

            “I think you mean three, there, Six. Someone’s getting offended at being excluded,” Katie says, and Six laughs as she draws her hand back. Boone lets his hand rest on Katie’s shoulder for another few seconds before he lets it fall to his side.

            “We should probably head out. The sooner we get to Vegas, the better,” Boone says, and they can’t argue with that. Katie tugs her shoes on and Six shoulders her pack.

            “We’re on the road again, on the road again, I just can’t wait to get on the road again,” Katie sings, and she’s grinning because she’s purposefully singing out of tune and off-key. Six lets her sing for about a minute before she pushes her gently.

            “Shut the fuck up, Katie. Stop singing,” she says, but she’s not angry, not really, and there’s something good-natured about it.

            “Can I whistle?” Katie asks, the grin on her face growing. Six sighs heavily- it’s exaggerated and for the first time in a long time Katie thinks she might have a real friend.

            “God, no,” Six says, but she’s laughing.

            “What about humming? Can I hum?” Katie asks.

            “No, you can’t,” Boone says, from up ahead, and Katie and Six laugh together. Boone glances over his shoulder at them and they can see the grin on his face.

            Katie thinks that this is probably better than anything that could be waiting for her back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i've figured out relationships, etc. in this 
> 
> do you guys want me to go ahead and tag them so you know or would you rather me not put the spoilers in?? if i don't get a response soonish i'll go ahead and do it. i'm sure at least some of them are predictable lmao 
> 
> also in the next chapter there'll be some more six characterization and also probably something that could be qualified as shit hitting the fan.


	6. oh, calamity

            They made camp early that night. Katie couldn’t walk much farther, and she was sure she had at least three new blisters on her feet. Boone and Six set up camp, moving quickly, and they left Katie with the food supplies. Katie cobbled together another quick and decent meal. It was a far cry from what she was used to, but it was better than nothing, and her stomach hurt from the hunger.

            After supper, they were sitting around the fire together. Katie wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep just yet, and it seemed that Six and Boone weren’t either. Katie had taken the gun Six had given her out of the holster and was examining it. It was old and well used, but well-cared for and in excellent condition.

            “Do you know how to shoot that thing?” Boone asks, and Katie almost jumps.

            “It’s just like using a camera, isn’t it? Just point and shoot?” she asks, a faint grin on her face. Six rolls her eyes and sits up, plucking the gun out of Katie’s hands.

            “Not quite. It’s a little more difficult than that,” the other woman says.

            “Well, you’re no fun,” Katie pouts. Six rolls her eyes and scoots closer. Boone moves to the side.

            “I’m also about to give you a crash course in how to use the damn thing. You gotta be careful- it’s harder to aim than you’d think. It’s hard to keep your hands from shaking, especially if you’re in a situation where you need the damn thing. Most of the thing about confrontation is bluster- if you can convince them you’ll shoot them without thinking about it, you’ve won. I hope you won’t have to use it just yet, but the world has a way of dicking us over,” Six says. She stands, and motions for Katie to follow her. For the next hour, they practice aiming the gun. Katie starts to get used to the feel of it in her hands, and she finds that it’s easier to reload than she thought. She’s just worried about what will happen when she needs to use it. She’s never been much for confrontation.

* * *

            They next couple of days passed quick and easy. It took them a little longer than they thought it would, because Katie couldn’t keep pace, but by noon on the fifth day they were in Freeside. They’d just entered the gate when two men approached them, wearing mismatched armor cobbled together that had been cobbled together. There was something dark in their eyes as they crossed their arms over their chests. Based on the way Six’s lips pull back in a snarl, Katie can tell these men aren’t exactly stranger. Boone pushes Katie behind him and reaches for his knife. He knows his rifle won’t be any good, not this close.

            “What the hell do you want, Powder Ganger?” Six growls, her hand drifting to the knife she kept hidden on her belt. She’s been itching for a fight the last few days, and she’d be glad to give these men one if they wanted it.

            “We’re lookin’ for you, little lady. We know what you did back in Primm and Goodsprings,” the taller one says, and he pulls out a knife, flicking it open. Katie can almost see the hate rolling off of him, and she shudders.

            “Then you know that messing with my friend is a death sentence,” Boone says. Katie swallows hard, her hand going to the pistol that Six had given her. The panic is threatening to overwhelm her now- she’d only ever gotten into one fistfight back in high school. She’d won, but that was probably because she worked out regularly then and the girl who’d jumped her didn’t. Rex snarls next to her, bringing Katie out of the past.

            “See, our brother wanted to live too. But you killed him. So we thought we might just have to return the favor,” the shorter one says, cracking his knuckles. It’s dramatic and a little ridiculous, but Katie’s terrified and Six is getting more pissed off by the second.

            “Go fuck yourselves,” Six snarls, and then the world explodes into violence.

            Six and Rex both jump at the tall one, and the short one goes for Boone. He pushes Katie away, making her stumble, and he spins around to meet his attacker. Katie feels trapped, panicking as she watches Six and Boone brawl with the two Powder Gangers. She looks around helplessly when she sees her- a woman, clearly with the two men, but this one has a gun. She’s pointing it straight at Boone, and the way the other man is working to keep Boone’s back pointed towards the woman, Katie knows this is deliberate.

            She doesn’t think. She just moves, jumping in front of the woman as she fires. She has time to scream before the bullet hits her, entering her shoulder and tearing out through the other side. She wishes she could say she brought her own gun up to fire at the other woman, but she doesn’t. She lets out a strangled moan, her hand coming up to grab her shoulder, and she falls to her knees. She’s not sure what happens next, but later she’ll find out that Six sinks her knife into the neck of the man she was just fighting with before turning around and throwing it at the woman who shot her. The knife sinks into the woman’s forehead, and Boone pushes his attacker towards Six. He kneels down in front of Katie, and there are spots forming in front of her eyes, and she’s pretty sure she’s screaming.

            That’s what she remembers, after the bullet hits her- Boone kneeling in front of her, asking her something. She can’t quite make out the words, and his face is blurry. She thinks he swears, because then he picks her up, moving her into an alley. Six is standing at the end of it, a gun in her hand, and Katie lets herself pass out, curling towards Boone and safety.

            She wakes up less than a minute later. Her shoulder burns with a throbbing, searing pain, and she whimpers the second she can feel it, one hand grabbing weakly at Boone’s shirt. He makes soft, soothing sounds in the back of his throat. “Katie, can you understand me?” he asks, and she finds herself nodding. She can’t quite bring herself to speak just yet, and she curls closer to Boone. Six moves to kneel next to them, shifting Katie so that Six is bearing most of her weight.

            “Katie, Boone’s going to have to give you a stimpack, and some Med-X for pain. You just got shot in the shoulder- the bullet went clear through and I don’t think it hit any major arteries. We’ll get you to a doctor after we’re sure you won’t bleed out on the way,” Six tells her, her voice soft in Katie’s ear. If Katie notices the way Six is speaking around a lump in her throat, she doesn’t mention it. Six thinks she’s too distracted to notice, though.

            Boone moves quickly, injecting her with the Med-X first. Katie lets out a quiet whimper, sinking back against Six, and Boone picks up the stimpack. The throbbing pain eases by the time Boone’s finished injecting the stimpack into her arm, just underneath the bullet wound. It still burns and aches as Boone bandages it, but Katie finds that it’s a little easier to breathe.

            Six pats her uninjured shoulder gently. “Good job. You even managed not to bleed everywhere,” she jokes. She’s trying to ease the panic that’s settled like a rock in her stomach, and Katie gives Six a weak and watery smile. Boone doesn’t take the joke as well.

            “What the hell is wrong with you, Six? She was just shot!” Boone yelled. Six takes the time to prop Katie up against the building before turning to Boone, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.

            “It was a joke, Boone. There’s no need for you to freak the fuck out like this,” Six replies.

            “Yeah, you always make jokes like this, and my point is that you shouldn’t! She’s not from here, Six, and she was just shot! That's inappropriate at best,” he retorted.

            “I know, goddammit! I’m not stupid! I was trying to lighten the mood! God knows the first time I was shot, I’d have wanted someone in the room cracking jokes,” Six yells. She doesn’t mean to yell, not really, she’s just scared and tense and she can’t take Boone yelling at her on top of this.

            “Not everyone appreciates those kinds of jokes, Six,” Boone tells her, his voice hard and even.

            Katie starts to cry, her body shaking with sobs as she pulls her knees to her chest, her injured arm hanging uselessly by her side. Boone and Six swear simultaneously and kneel down next to Katie. Boone reaches her first, and she presses herself against him, shaking and crying as she hides her face in his neck. Six sighs heavily, and swallows the lump in her throat.

            “I’ll help you get her to the Followers, and I’ll leave you half of the supplies. I need to get out, explore the Mojave on my own. You know I get antsy when I’m not by myself after a while. I’m sorry, the joke I made was in poor taste,” Six says, squaring her shoulders. Boone looks up at her nods, scooping Katie up. She whimpers, curling even closer to Boone. She mutters something almost inaudible.

            “What was that?” Six asks, trying to keep her voice light. She moves closer, and Katie turns her head to look at Six.

            “I don’t want you to go, Six,” Katie says, and Six thinks she sounds so pitiful that she can hardly stand it.

            “Hey, don’t worry, kid. I’ll be fine. I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen. You and Boone can head to Novac, and I’ll be there before you know it,” Six says, reaching out and cupping Katie’s face. Katie leans into the touch, her hands curling in the fabric of Boone’s shirt.

            “We need to get to the Followers. Once they have a look at you, we can say our goodbyes,” Boone says, avoiding Six’s eyes as he starts walking. Six lets her hand fall to her side and she pulls her pistol back out, checking around them as they walk through the streets.

            “I hate goodbyes,” Katie mumbles, resting her head against Boone’s chest. She’s unconscious again by the time they reach the Followers.

* * *

            Katie wakes up in an unfamiliar place. She tries to bolt upright, a soft scream caught in her throat, but there’s a soft yet insistent hand pressing her uninjured shoulder back against the mattress. “Whoa, kiddo. The good doctors here don’t want you up and about just yet,” Six says, and Katie’s eyes focus enough so that she can see Six and Boone by her bed, Six pressing her gently against the mattress. Katie stops fighting, reaching out with her uninjured hand. Boone takes it, rubbing his thumb gently along her knuckles.

            “Water,” she croaks, and Six brings her own canteen up to Katie’s lips without thinking about it, slipping around to the head of her cot and holding her head up. Katie gulps the water down eagerly, her hand squeezing Boone’s.

            “There we go,” Six says, brushing Katie’s hair out of her face as she takes the canteen away. Katie makes a soft sound in the back of throat, and Six smiles.

            “I was afraid you’d left already,” Katie murmurs. Six runs her hand through her hair, almost sheepishly.

            “Nah, I wouldn’t do that. You wanted to say goodbye,” Six tells her. Katie pulls her hand out of Boone’s and reaches up to her neck, fumbling with the clasp of the necklace she’s wearing. It’s an old locket, golden and heart-shaped, and covered in scratches. It’s got an old photograph of Katie when she was little, smiling with crooked teeth at the camera. Katie finally gets it unclasped, falling back with it clenched in her fist. After a moment, she holds it out to Six, who takes it hesitantly.

            “Take it. Maybe it’ll be a good luck charm for you,” Katie says, and Six smiles at her. She fastens it around her neck and tucks it into her shirt.

            “Thank you. I can always use a little more luck from a pretty girl like you,” Six says, and Katie blushes. Six laughs, reaching down and ruffling Katie’s hair.

            “When are you leaving?” Katie asks, shifting to sit up as much as they’ll let her.

            “Soon. I wanted to make sure you were okay first. You’ll be fine with Boone, won’t you?” Six asks, almost nervously. It’s been a long time since the courier had worried about anyone else like this. She cared about Boone, of course, but Boone didn’t need a babysitter. She worried about him sometimes, especially when she could tell he was thinking about the ghosts from his past, but it had been a long time since she was faced with someone else’s mortality. It was not a pleasant feeling.

            “Yeah. I’ll be fine with him. You be careful, Six,” Katie says, reaching out for Six and gesturing for the redhead to give her a hug. Normally, Six would laugh at anyone that wanted a hug from her, but she leaned down and wrapped one arm awkwardly around Katie.

            “I will. You don’t let Boone do anything reckless, and you do what he says. I’ve left you a thousand caps, and I’ve paid for your treatment. Use that thousand caps to buy whatever supplies you’ll need. Once you’re better, you can probably head out to Novac- that’s where I’ll look for you two. I’ll take Rex with me, so I’ll have someone watching out for me. You be careful, and don’t you dare get shot again,” Six says. Katie nods, and she can feel her bottom lip trembling.

            “Six? Don’t say goodbye. Just…promise you’ll be back,” Katie asks, in a small voice. She’s too scared and in too much pain to feel self-conscious about how pathetic she sounds right now.

            “I’ll be back before you know it, and you’ll be begging for me to get out of your hair,” Six answers, grinning, “you got a reason, though?”

            “If you don’t say goodbye, it’s like you’re not really gone. You’re just…not here right now,” Katie whispers, and Six nods, leaning down to hug Katie again.

            “All right. I’ll be back later. You two take care of each other,” Six says. Boone stands up then, and moves in front of Six. The two stare at each other for a few agonizing heartbeats before Boone holds his arms open. Six hugs him almost reluctantly.

            “You take care of yourself, Six. If something happens to you, I’ll come kick your ass myself,” Boone grunts.

            “Back at you. You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re my pain in the ass. I’ll see you guys later,” Six says. She throws her pack over her shoulder and heads towards the tent flap, pausing to look back at them. Katie gives her a tiny wave, and Six is grinning when she heads out of Freeside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen i'm not one to spoil my own stuff but don't worry i will not do anything Bad while these guys are seperated i promise


	7. four strong winds

            Katie drifted out of a fitful sleep for the rest of the day, and well into the night. Often, she’d wake whimpering, struggling to sit up before falling back at the sudden, sharp pain in her shoulder. Whenever she did wake up, Boone was always next to her cot. There were a couple of times when he was reading something. Once, she woke up and he was eating. She managed to ask for water, but she’d fallen asleep again by the time he’d returned with it. When she woke up for the last time, he was stretched out on a cot next to hers, his beret pulled down over his face and one hand stretched out towards her, in case she needed him in the night. She was restless, ready to be awake and moving. Her mouth felt dry, tasted awful, and her bladder was so full it ached. She fished her phone out of her pocket, checking the time. The light was almost blinding, making her wince until she could turn the brightness down. Once her watering eyes adjusted, she saw it was just past midnight.

            She pushed herself into a sitting position, gritting her teeth at the pain emanating from her shoulder. Once the throbbing died down, she felt a little better already. Her feet were bare, her shirt was missing, and she still wasn’t sure where she was, but at least she’d managed to sit up. She and Boone were the only ones in the tent- there was another empty cot pushed to the side, and desks covered in medical equipment. She shuddered to think about how sterile it all was, and wondering if she was more at risk of an infection than she would have been from the injury itself. Next to her, Boone twitches in his sleep, soft sounds of distress coming from his throat, drawing her attention to him. Katie recognizes the signs of a nightmare, and she hesitates for a moment. Some people got violent when they were woken suddenly from a nightmare, and Katie didn’t think she could handle that. But Boone let out another whimper, and she knew she couldn’t sit there and listen to him. She reached out her hand, laying it gently on his shoulder. He tensed up immediately, and she slid off her cot, her feet touching the cool, packed dirt. “Boone,” she whispers, and he sits up so suddenly she lets out a squeak of surprise, almost falling backwards. He reaches out to catch her, his hand wrapping around the wrist of her uninjured arm.

            “Katie? You should be back in bed,” he tells her, his voice gruff with sleep.

            “I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I needed to use the bathroom. I didn’t want to wake you up, but you seemed like you were having a bad dream, and I don’t know where we are, and I didn’t want to just leave you and go looking for a bathroom,” she says, shifting awkwardly. Boone mutters something that she can’t quite understand, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and standing up. He stretches, arching his back, and his shirt rides up his stomach. Katie swallows when she sees how heavily muscled he is. He could probably snap her like a twig.

            “We’re in the Old Mormon Fort. The Followers of the Apocalypse are the best, and only doctors, that were around. They’ve given you a few more stimpacks to repair most of the damage, but they don’t have many. They say it’s best for you to recover as much as possible on your own, anyway,” he tells her. She glances at her shoulder, almost afraid of what she’ll see, but it’s covered in bloody gauze. The area around it seems clean, and there doesn’t seem to be any blood on the rest of her chest.

            “How long will we be staying here?” she asks. He shrugs, shifting and moving closer to examine her bandages.

            “They said it’ll probably be about a week, unless there’s any complications. They don’t think there will be- you’re young and you’re healthy, but things can happen. We probably need to get this changed, though,” he answers. Katie draws her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing on it nervously.

            “Do we need to go get one of the doctors?” she asks. He shakes his head, motioning for her to sit back down on her cot.

            “Nah. They showed me how to bandage it. It’s probably going to hurt, especially when I clean it. I can give you some Med-X, Six left all of hers with us. It is, however, addictive, and you’ve already had three syringes of it in a short span of time. It’s up to you,” he tells her. Katie closes her eyes, one hand gripping the edge of the cot.

            “I’ll try it without the Med-X,” she says, and she knows she’s going to regret it. Her shoulder throbs at the idea of it, and she makes a soft sound as Boone moves farther into the tent, lighting an old oil lantern and gathering the gauze and everything else he’d need. She keeps her eyes fixed on the flap of the tent, her jaw squared. She jumps when she feels him brush against her, and then relaxes as he presses a steadying hand against the small of her back.

            “I’ll be as gentle as I can,” he promises. She nods, and then bites back a groan as he starts to peel the dirty bandage off of her shoulder. The sudden cold air against the wound makes her draw a breath in through her teeth, and Boone pauses to glance at her. She meets his eyes for a moment before looking away, squaring her jaw and promising herself that she won’t cry out. He’s seen her vulnerable more than she’d have liked already- if there was a way, she’d change the damn bandage herself just to prove she didn’t need a babysitter.

            She almost screams when he starts dabbing alcohol around the wound. From the sharp smell, she thinks it’s vodka, but it burns too much to matter. She lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a gasp and a groan, and her grip on the cot tightens. She’d never experienced anything so painful as this before, except for maybe the whole getting shot part, but she’d passed out during that, so it was objectively less bad than this.

            “Sorry. I know it stings,” Boone apologizes, and Katie lets out a strained laugh.

            “Yeah, it stings all right. Shit, I didn’t think it’d hurt this bad,” she answers, her voice rough.

            “You did just get shot,” he reminds her, a faint grin on his face. He puts the alcohol-soaked rag down on the desk and picks up the bandage, and Katie sighs in relief.

            “Have you ever gotten shot?” she asks him, watching as he neatly places the bandage over the wound. It’s throbbing again, but not as bad as it could have been.

            “A few times. I’ve got a couple of scars,” he answers. As soon as he’s done, Katie slides back off of the cot, keeping one hand on it to steady herself.

            “It must be a pretty common occurrence out in the Wasteland. Especially with damn near everyone having access to a gun,” she murmurs. He takes a minute to put away the medical supplies he’d just grabbed, including a stained bottle of vodka. Katie wrinkles her nose and tries not to think about the sort of medical care she’d have gotten back home, or home at all. She can still barely believe that all of this is real.

            “It is pretty common, yeah. More so in the NCR as a soldier, but it is what it is. You said you had to go to the bathroom?” he asks her, reaching up to adjust his beret.

            “Yeah. If you don’t mind escorting me,” she says, doing her best to look apologetic. He nods and reaches for their pack, pulling out a shirt. It’s one of his, Katie can tell by looking at it.

            “You might want to put this on. I’ll help,” he offers, and he very pointedly keeps his eyes on her face. She can feel herself blushing, but she nods and moves towards him. It takes a little work to get the shirt on, and it takes a little more to get her shoes on. She leaves them untied, and just tucks the laces inside.

            “Thanks,” she says, breathless by the time it’s over. Her shoulder is screaming in pain, and she’d just lay down again if it weren’t for the ache in her bladder. He keeps one hand on her uninjured arm, his grip gentle but insistent. She stumbles after him, her legs weak. She feels like she shouldn’t be up walking, but she has to remind herself that it was her shoulder that got shot, and her legs were perfectly fine.

            He takes her to the area that the Followers have sectioned off, well away from anything else. He makes sure she doesn’t need him, and then turns his back. She feels a little embarrassed, but mostly she’s too tired and in too much pain to give much of a damn at all. After a few agonizing minutes spent trying not to piss on herself or fall in, she can pull up her pants and stumble back towards Boone, trying desperately to button her jeans with one hand.

            “All done?” he asks, slight amusement on his face. She shoots him a dirty look, but it’s ruined by the wind blowing her hair in her face. She splutters, tossing her head, and he laughs. She lifts her arm up to restrain her hair in a ponytail and gathers it all up before she realizes she’s only got the use of one hand, and can’t exactly maneuver like she needs to. She pauses and looks up at Boone helplessly.

            “Help?” she asks, and she almost laughs. She thinks she’s coping remarkably well, considering she was just shot, but with the way he’s looking at her with a half-grin on his face she thinks that maybe it was worth it.

            “Yeah,” he says, shifting closer, reaching up and taking over. His hands are gentle in her hair, and she lets her eyes drift a little closer to shut.

            “Katie?” he asks, pulling back. She looks up at him, shivering a little as another breeze blows.

            “Yeah, Boone?” she says, wrapping her uninjured arm around her chest.

            “You took that bullet for me, didn’t you?” he asks, and the air around them goes still. His voice is quiet, and she can’t tell from his tone if he’s pissed or not. She almost can’t think of how to answer him.

            “No?” she says, and she braces herself as he crosses his arms over his chest, his beret still hanging from one hand.

            “I’d be more inclined to believe you if you sounded more sure of yourself,” he comments, almost casually, and Katie gets a sick feeling in her stomach. She has to remind herself that this is Boone, not her father, and she’s not got anything to worry about.

            “Okay. Maybe I did. You and Six were both busy, and she was pointing a gun at you. It would have killed you. So I just…acted,” she tells him. She looks down at the ground, and tries to forget about how scared she’d been.

            “Don’t ever do it again,” he tells her, and she’d roll her eyes if they weren’t talking about something so serious.

            “And why the hell not? None of us died,” she protests. He sighs, taking his beret off and running his hand along his hair. It’s starting to grow out, and he makes a note in his head to get it shaved off again.

            “You meant well. I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, I am. You barely know me, and you jumped in front of a bullet for me. That says a hell of a lot about you. But I’m a trained professional. You’re just a civilian, and you have less experience with this kind of stuff than most civilians in the Wasteland. Let the trained professionals handle it next time,” he says, his hand twisting in the cloth of the beret.

            “Listen, I’m too tired and in too much pain to argue with you right now. I really just want to get back to my cot and pass out for a few more hours,” she says, half-pleading. He nods, swallowing heavily. He reaches out and lets his hand rest on the small of her back and she’s grateful for it. They walk back to the tent and she kicks off her shoes, gingerly lying back down on the cot. It’s a few hours before she can fall back asleep, but when she does she sleeps until well past dawn.

* * *

            The next morning, Boone hands her a box of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes for breakfast. She’s never heard of them, but they’re sweet and close enough to Little Debbie Cakes that she feels a little bit more like home isn’t too far away. They’re close enough to Twinkies that she closes her eyes when she bites into one, and she’s three into the pack when she discovers they have different flavored fillings. She thinks she’s in heaven when she bites into one with peanut butter flavored filling. It’s stale, and under any other situation it’d be disgusting. She’s also trying to pretend like they aren’t irradiated- she had to take two doses of Rad-X before Boone would let her go near the damn things.

            Disaster strikes, though, when she reaches into the box for another one and comes up empty. She looks at Boone, her face screwed up as she fights against what she knows is coming, and he looks up at her just as it hits her. She starts sobbing, flinging the box away. Her shoulders shake with the force of her sobs, the pain of her injury flaring up and making her cry harder.

            “Katie, what’s wrong?” Boone asks, reaching towards her. Katie tries to shake her head and tell him she’s fine, but she can’t get a word out past her sobs and the second he touches her she curls towards him, her hand curling in the loose fabric of his shirt.

            “I’m sorry,” she wails, after a couple of seconds desperately fighting to get the words out.

            “Why are you sorry for crying?” Boone asks, perplexed. If she wasn’t crying so hard, she’d probably be laughing. She knows he must be confused- hell, she’s confused and she’s the one crying. All she knows is that everything hits her all at once- everything is different, she’s probably never going back, she got shot, and Six is off God knows where in the Mojave. It’s a good few minutes before she can answer, pulling back and wiping at her eyes.

            “I didn’t mean to start crying like that. Everything just hit me at once. I’m sorry I ended up clinging to you; you must be getting tired of me crying on you all the time,” she says, her voice still thick with tears. She could probably benefit from a little more crying, but she can’t bring herself to be that vulnerable unless she had no choice.

            “There’s nothing wrong with it,” is all Boone says, his hand on her back for a few moments until he’s sure she doesn’t need him anymore. She just nods and reaches for a bottle of water.

* * *

            The next few days pass in a blur of naps. Katie hadn’t slept that much since she got her wisdom teeth taken out, but there wasn’t much for her to do here and the various doctors who’d come by to check on the wound told her she needed her rest anyway. By the third day, she starts having nightmares, jerking herself awake to the echoing sound of a gunshot in her ears.

            She’s only out of bed to eat and go to the bathroom, and by the fourth day, she’s feeling more grimy than she thought possible. She’s been in the Mojave Wasteland for a total of nine days, and she hasn’t bathed once. Part of her wants to curl up and die when she realizes this. The doctors tell her she’s healed up enough to take a bath, she just has to be careful not to get the gauze wet.

            That’s how she ended up here, sitting in front of a tub with no conceivable way to take the shirt Boone let her borrow off, or to unhook her bra. She sits there for about thirty minutes, trying to find different ways to ease herself out of the shirt, but none of them are working and in the end she has to bury her face in her knees and hold back a frustrated scream. That’s how she’s sitting when Boone comes up to the tent.

            “Katie? Are you okay in there?” he asks, and she nearly jumps out of her skin as she presses one hand over her heart.

            “I was before you put me into cardiac arrest,” she gasps, and it takes her a moment to get her heart to stop racing.

            “Do you need any help?” he asks her. She knows he’s also asking if she’s decent enough for him to enter.

            “I…Yes, please,” she says, swallowing her pride. It leaves a bitter aftertaste in her mouth.

            His eyes widen a little when he enters the tent and sees her just sitting there, but she struggles to her feet and tries not to look too pathetic. “What do you need?” he asks.

            “I can’t…I can’t figure out how to get my shirt off. I can’t move my shoulder and I’ve done everything I thought might work and now it _hurts_ and I’m still wearing the damn thing,” she says, and her bottom lip trembles. _Oh no_ , she thinks, _fuck this. I am not crying over this._

            “I’ll do my best to help you get that arm out of the shirt,” Boone says. He looks at her for a moment, like he’s sizing the situation up, and then his hands are there, gently working the shirt off of her arm. She lets out a ragged breath, her shoulder still aching as he eases the shirt off and reaches around her to unfasten her bra. She rests her forehead against his chest, exhausted by all of it.

            “Thanks,” she whispers, and she feels for a moment like she’s been in the Wasteland forever.

            “I’ll be waiting outside, in case you need anything else,” he tells her, making sure she’s steady before ducking outside. She can hear him settling down on the ground outside, and she climbs into the small metal tub, letting out a groan of relief at the cool water against her skin. She scrubs herself as good as she can with the rag, avoiding the edge of the gauze with more care than she’s ever shown anything in her life before. She’s not eager to irritate the wound anymore than she has too. The best part, though, is when she can scrub her hair. It’s a little awkward to maneuver herself in a way that’ll let her scrub the dirt and sweat and blood out of it without getting the gauze wet, but when she does she lets out a soft groan that’s almost obscene.

            When she gets out, patting herself dry with the towel and scrambling to get dressed lest someone walk in on her, the water is a disgusting shade of brown. Boone had managed to dig out a pair of pants Six left, and the Followers donated one of their undershirts to her, and Boone’s shirt isn’t too dirty yet. The pants are a little tight, the undershirt a little loose, but she feels a lot more ready to deal with whatever it is she’s supposed to deal with by the time she’s dressed. It’s an ordeal and a half to work the shirts over her shoulder, but the sleeves are wide enough that she can.

            Boone doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look so proud as Katie does when she saunters out of the tent fully dressed, even though her shirt is on backwards.

* * *

            Katie finds that it’s satisfying, being able to see the wound heal. The stimpacks have worked wonders, and the Med-X helps her numb the pain when it gets too much. By day six, the doctors tell her she’s clear to do whatever she wants, and there’s only a little stiffness left in her shoulder.

            Boone is sitting outside the tent cleaning his rifle when she gets the news, and she comes bounding outside with it. She’s had another bath recently, and changed back into her own jeans. With the oversized t-shirt, she feels almost like she would at home. “What’s the news?” Boone asks, looking up from his rifle.

            “I’m better,” she tells him, a wide grin on her face. She wants to tell him it’s all thanks to him, but she’s afraid he’ll remind her she only got shot because of him. He gives her a slow, wide smile, and she thinks she’d do anything to keep it there.

            “What do you say we head on out to Novac? It’ll take about five days, walking slow. We’ll buy what supplies we can in Freeside and head out,” he suggests. Katie’s heart twists a little when she remembers Six won’t be with them, but she’s eager to get out of the Old Mormon Fort.

            “I say we should leave as soon as possible,” she says, and she’s a little astounded at how quick they gather their supplies.


	8. under a paper moon

            They stuck around long enough for Katie to thank the kind doctor who patched her up before heading out into Freeside. It’s a pretty day; the sun is shining and a light breeze is blowing, making Katie’s hair flap around her face. It’s only a minor annoyance, and her shoulder is too stiff for her to bother with tying it back. It’s a relief to step outside the gates of the Old Mormon Fort- over the last week they place had started to feel a little stifling. As she steps out onto the street, she finds herself looking up and down it.

            “Is there anywhere we can get some clothes? I’ve only got the one outfit, and I don’t want to keep stealing yours,” she asks, turning to look at Boone as he shuts the gates behind them.

            “There’s some of Carla’s old clothes back in Novac. You could have them,” he tells her, but she can tell by the look on his face that he doesn’t really want her wearing them. She’s not sure who Carla is or why Boone has her old clothes, but she doesn’t want to ask.

            “We could just buy some more. Six gave us a thousand caps, I’m sure we could find something for cheap. I only need a few shirts and a couple of pairs of pants anyway,” she suggests. She wonders if Carla has anything to do with the nightmare Boone had a few days ago, or the ones he’s had since. He doesn’t know that she notices most of them, and she’s not mentioned it yet. She doesn’t want to make things between them any more awkward than they already are.

            “I was going to stop at Mick & Ralph’s anyway. They have a little of everything. You might find something you’ll wear there. We also need to get you another gun. I’m decent with short-range weapons like that pistol, but if I’m going to teach you in Novac I’d like to have a rifle for you. We need to get more supplies, too. We’ll run out of food and water on our way to Novac if we don’t,” he tells her, shifting uneasily.

            “All right. Lead the way,” she says. He nods and heads out. Katie trails after him, looking around nervously. She doubts they’ll get attacked again, but getting shot will make a person a little twitchy.

            Mick & Ralph’s is a bigger shop than she expected. They’ve set up in one of the old Pre-War buildings, and it’s a lot cleaner than she was expecting. Boone tells her who is who before heading straight for Mick to peruse the weapons, so Katie heads over to the man named Ralph. He looks younger than she expected, but he seems nice enough.

            “What can I do for you, little lady?” he asks her, a friendly smile on her face. She crosses her arms over her chest nervously.

            “I was looking for some clothes. Don’t have many that are fit to wear,” she tells him.

            “Well, we’ve got several pieces of clothing that may interest you over here,” he tells her, motioning for her to follow. She does, and he leads her to a chest with the lid propped open. There are a couple of dresses, some t-shirts, a couple of pairs of pants, and a skimpy nightgown. She grabs the three least-ratty t-shirts and the pants. Luckily, they’d fit, although she’d need her belt for the pants, and they probably wouldn’t make her ass look all that great. After a moment of hesitation, she grabs the nightgown too. She’ll feel better if she’s got something to change into when she sleeps, even if she doesn’t do that until they get to Novac.

            “Thank you kindly, sir,” she says, standing up with the clothes clutched in her arms. She notices a knapsack for sale as well, so she picks it up. It’ll make her feel better if she can carry some of the weight, even if Boone will be carrying most of it.

            “Of course. Anything else?” he asks. Boone is already waiting to go, so Katie doesn’t want to wait too long, but she sees a bowl filled with metal pieces. She leans over, her brow furrowing. Some of them are just chunks of metal, others are old coins, some are bullets, but there are a few old world charms in there that’d be perfect for a necklace. She reaches her hand to her throat before remembering she gave hers to Six. Still, she sees a tiny Earth charm so she fishes it out of the bowl.

            “How much for this?” she asks, holding it out so Ralph can see.

            “For a pretty girl like you? It’s free,” he tells her. She’s a little uncomfortable and she’s blushing, but she nods her thanks and slips it into her pocket, glancing at Boone. His face doesn’t give much away, but Katie doesn’t think he’s too pleased at the whole exchange. She stands next to him as he counts out the caps, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She’s ready to get out of here- out of Freeside, and out into the open Mojave. She never thought she’d be eager for a full day of walking, but she’d never thought she’d have gotten shot either.

            She leads the way out of the sop, letting out a deep sigh of relief once the doors shut behind them.

            “Didn’t like it in there?” Boone asks her, a faintly amused smile on his face.

            “Not much, no. At least I got some clothes, and a pack of my own. Let’s switch over some of the stuff so you aren’t the only one carrying it,” she says, shrugging the pack off of her shoulders. The only things in there right now are the clothes she just bought, but it feels nice to have her own things.

            “Are you sure? I don’t want to give you too much to carry,” Boone says, but he’s pulling his pack off of his back and opening it up anyway.

            “Yeah. Maybe don’t give me super heavy things, but I’d like to help,” she tells him. He nods, sifting through his pack to find stuff she can carry.

            She ends up with the extra ammo and the medical supplies. It’s not a lot, but it clears up some space in Boone’s backpack. He teaches her how to secure her new rifle to her back next to the bag, in a way that’ll let her grab it for easy access.

            “Are we ready to go?” she asks, once they’ve got their packs secured on their backs once more.

            “Yeah. Although…I’ve got another beret I can give you. It’ll keep your scalp from getting sunburnt, if you want it,” he says, and she can see some sort of indecision in his eyes.

            “I’d love it,” she tells him. Something flickers in his eyes behind his sunglasses and he smiles. He takes a moment to dig it out of his pack before handing it to her. She puts it on, but she must have put it on crooked, ‘cause he reaches up and adjusts it for her. She flashes him a smile and the head out, towards the open Mojave Desert. 

* * *

            “Hey, Boone? You ever take your beret off?” she asks him, just after they exit the gates.

            “No. Not really,” he answers. He doesn’t seem too inclined to talk, but Katie doesn’t want to spend the day in complete silence. She just has to figure out how to steer clear from uncomfortable topics.

            “Well, what is it? It’s got a patch on it and everything. What does it mean? I’m assuming it’s something important, but I don’t know anything about the Wasteland,” she says. He’s slowed down enough to walk next to her, and he glances over at her as she talks.

            “It’s a First Recon beret. I was with the NCR, and served in the sniper’s battalion. You can tell the beret is First Recon because of the patch and the motto. The motto’s faded, but it’s there,” he says, reaching up to tap at the patch.

            “What’s the motto? I can’t make it out,” she asks, reaching up absentmindedly to rub at her shoulder.

            “It’s ‘the last thing you’ll never see.’ Pretty accurate, and so were we,” Boone replies. There’s an almost faraway look in his eyes, like he’s remembering something.

            “How’d you join the First Recon? Sounds like special ops or something. Although, admittedly, my knowledge about military recruitment from my time is sketchy at best, so you could probably get me to believe almost anything,” she says, a wry grin on her face.

            “The NCR picked me out at a shooting range. They look for talent there and if you’re good, you get the offer. It paid well, so I took the job,” he answers. She almost asks him why he’s not with the NCR anymore, but she figures that’s probably a sensitive topic. Instead she asks him other questions about the NCR and the Wasteland.

* * *

            They stop early that night. Katie’s feet are killing her and she’s tired, but after half an hour around the campfire she feels a lot better. “So, what’s Novac like?” she asks.

            “It’s…it is what it is. I started traveling with Six so I could get out. Don’t know what else to do with myself. It’s also one of the only places that we can stay for extended periods of time,” he tells her. She senses she’s heading into dangerous territory.

            “I wish you could see my world. I think you’d like it there,” she says. She lies back on the blanket and puts one arm behind her head and the other over her stomach.

            “What do you miss from your world?” he asks her, poking at the fire with a stick. She takes a deep breath, looking up at the sky. The first few stars are starting to come out. She can point out a few of them and name them, and somehow it’s a little comforting that they’re the same.

            “I miss showers, first and foremost. I miss air conditioning and food without radiation. I miss cars, too, and sunblock. But I miss my guitar, too. Playing and singing for a few hours was a good way to unwind. And I guess I kind of miss my stuffed animals, too. I’ve had this one stuffed bear since I was, like, four. It’s weird, knowing I’m probably never going to go back,” she says, and there’s a wistful tone in her voice as she stares up at the stars. They may be the same, but everything else is different too.

            “How long have you been able to play the guitar?” he asks her, lying down next to her, his arms crossed behind his head.

            “I started taking lessons when I was around ten. I’ve been playing for almost eleven years. I’ve gotten pretty good, if I do say so myself,” she says, a faint smile on her face. She tries not to think about how she’ll be spending her twenty-first birthday in a radioactive wasteland instead of getting as wasted as possible.

            “What else were you interested in? There has to be more than that,” he says, shifting to get comfortable.

            “I like philosophy enough to make it my major. I like to read. I like science, too, but I was more into astronomy than anything else,” she tells him.

            “Astronomy? I don’t think I’m familiar with that,” he asks. Katie wonders, for a moment, at how much knowledge was lost.

            “It’s studying outer space. I’m a novice- I didn’t go in to get a degree or anything, but I think space is just as enchanting as it is terrifying,” she answers, and then she points up at the sky. “See that constellation right there? It’s called Orion. Those three stars are Orion’s Belt,” she says, her finger moving to outline it. Boone shifts closer to her, his gaze following hers up to the stars.

            “I’ve heard of constellations. Don’t know anything about them,” Boone says. She almost shifts closer to him, but she thinks better of it.

            “See that orange star? That one is called Betelgeuse. This other one, over here, the blue/white one is Bellatrix,” she says, pointing them out. Boone moves even closer, and she thinks there’s something almost magical about looking up at the stars.

* * *

            The next few days are uneventful. Katie and Boone stick to the road, only venturing off of it to set up camp at night. Katie also always volunteers for first watch. She gets used to the quiet of the desert, even though sometimes the sounds in the distance mean it isn’t so quiet. They walk slow, though, and Boone lets her stop as often as she thinks she needs. She tries to push herself into going as far as she can before she needs to rest, and she thinks she’s starting to get better. She’s going to need to take up running in Novac so she doesn’t lose all of the progress she’s making.

            Boone tells her a little about Novac before they get there, but not much. He mentions that he lives in what used to be a motel before the war and that he spent his nights up in the dinosaur as a sniper. She has to ask him about the dinosaur, but once he explains it’s a little less weird. God knows there are weirder things back home. She insists long before they reach Novac that she’ll sleep on the couch and let Boone have the bed- it’s his home and he’s already babysitting her. He tried to argue, but it was a fight that she won for the time being. He did promise he’d teach her how to use that new sniper rifle he got her, and he’d even try to work on her aim with the pistol.

            She figured she was probably going to like Novac.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm trying to get to the Good Parts but i hope i'm not speeding this thing along too fast. 
> 
> anyway, please leave comments letting me know what you guys think!! and if there's any scenes or interactions you'd like to see specifically, let me know that too. they're going to be in novac for like a month and a half before six returns so that's a lot of bonding they're going to have to have, so i'm open for suggestions


	9. cinderblock garden

            There is a broadcast that Six can hear on her Pip-Boy if she tunes to the right station. It’s a station that was usually reserved for emergency signals before the Great War, and she wonders what it means. It’s only been two days since she left Freeside, and she’s got nowhere to go. She was thinking about heading back down to Goodsprings to see if folks there needed anything else, or maybe heading back to the Mojave Outpost and looking for work. Instead, she shared a look with Rex.

            “What do you think, boy? Should we investigate?” she asks, her voice a few pitches higher than normal and so sugary sweet it’s a wonder the dog doesn’t bite her. He’s never seemed to mind the way she baby talks him, though, and he tilts his head to the side and lets out a whine.

            “Well, it does sound too good to be true. But beginning again sure does sound nice,” Six says wistfully and then she sighs, dragging her hand through her hair. She doesn’t think it’ll be too hard to find the signal of the broadcast- her Pip-Boy is telling her to head towards Camp Forlorn Hope. If she hurries, she can make it there in a couple of days.

            Rex barks, and Six reaches down to scratch him behind his ears before running her hand through his fur. “This probably is a bad idea, boy. Why don’t you come with me to Forlorn Hope, and then head on out to Novac. I’m sure Boone and Katie will appreciate having you around, and I feel like this is something I should do on my own,” she tells him.

            He lets out another whine. “I know, buddy. I hate to see you go, too. But you can send a note back to Katie and Boone that I’ll be gone longer than I expected and tell them not to worry about me. Plus, Katie’s probably a pushover. She’ll give you more of her food than that nasty dog food I feed you,” Six says, chuckling. Rex barks and nudges against her, and she stands back up. She shifts her backpack on her back and starts walking.

* * *

            Boone wasn’t eager to return to Novac, but he’s still relieved when he sees the dinosaur on the horizon. It was hot, they were nearly out of clean water, and Katie was so miserable that it was almost radiating off of her. “Boone, please tell me this means we’re almost there,” she says, and it almost sounds like she’s begging. She’s almost sick from the heat, she’s gotten sunburnt, and she’s _tired_. She’d never imagined she’d be walking for five days straight. She’s also started to get a little whiny- her shoulders ache from the straps digging into the skin and her back hurts from sleeping on the hard ground every night. She’s also trying her best not to whine too much; she doesn’t want to be an inconvenience, even though Boone’s assured her several times that it’s okay.

            “We actually are, this time. We should be there in a couple hours,” he tells her, an almost-smile on his face as she perks up instantly.

            “Thank God. I’d kill a man for some shade. Not literally, of course. I should probably specify that,” she says, reaching up to adjust the beret Boone gave her. He thinks that it looks good on her, though he’s not about to tell her.

            “Men have killed for less,” Boone comments. Katie makes a face, but she’s walking beside him now instead of dragging back.

            “Seeing the state of things in the Wasteland almost makes me sad. I wish I could turn it into something better,” she murmurs. She thinks again of _home_ , even though home is starting to get a little more uncertain for her. There were a lot of things she missed, but there were a lot of things that she didn’t.

            “That’s what the NCR is trying to do. It’s not easy. People are resisting, the Legion’s doing everything to stop their efforts, and they’re stretched pretty thin,” he tells her. She swipes the back of her hand across her forehead and stops herself from reaching for her canteen.

            “I bet whoever runs the show could be doing a lot better. That’s usually how it is in cases like this. I can’t really comment, though. Maybe there are some things I could help with on a smaller scale, if I was introduced to someone important,” she comments. She looks back up at the dinosaur in the distance and hopes it isn’t long before it starts to get closer.

            “What do you think you could do?” he asks, curiously. He knew it’d take a lot before the Wasteland was ready to give up any of its freedoms.

            “Well, start with some propaganda. It works; I’ve seen it. I’m not the best at art, but I could probably help get the message across. Recruit a couple of people to go hang posters everywhere and if you play your cards right, you’ll have people who are less antagonistic to the NCR. People are always going to be wary of any government, though, especially if it’s one just starting up in a land as lawless as this. I don’t envy the people in charge,” she answers. She wonders if she should have majored in politics, instead. Philosophy was interesting, but it had damn few practical applications out here.

            “It might work. They’d have to divert the resources into it. Six is getting popular with the higher-ups, so maybe she could make the suggestion. It might not be a bad idea,” he tells her, glancing over at her.

            “I know. Shocking, isn’t it? Sometimes my ideas aren’t completely terrible,” she says, grinning. He shakes his head almost fondly at her.

            “Yeah. Not all of them involve taking a bullet for someone,” he replies.

            “Hey, I didn’t even really think on that one. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she says, looking over at him. She got off just fine; all she has left to remind her of the incident is an ugly scar on her shoulder, and scars have never bothered her.

            “You shouldn’t have done it in the first place,” he says, a quiet frustration in his voice. She knows they’re getting close to dangerous subjects, and they’re getting close to an argument. She’s not sure if she’s ready for either of them, but there are no excuses she’s willing to make to back down.

            “If I hadn’t, you’d be dead, Boone,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s tired, suddenly, in a way she can’t explain.

            “You could have died, Katie. As it is, you’re lucky there’s no lasting damage and that we had the means to take care of you. This isn’t your world anymore,” he says, and she can tell he’s trying not to get pissed. She doesn’t want to let this go, though.

            “I could have, but I didn’t! I could have died lots of times by now- and not all of them since I got here! Listen, Boone, I’ve stared danger in the face every goddamn time my mother decided to pick up a beer. I _decided_ to step in front of that gun and I don’t regret it. It’s a hell of a lot easier when it’s a choice you make on your own. Why are you so pissed about this? I _didn’t_ die, I _didn’t_ get seriously injured, and you’re still here to bitch about it, so I don’t see the _problem_!” she says, and it takes a lot of effort to keep herself from yelling.

            “Listen, Katie, when we found you in that vault you became our responsibility. I don’t want you getting hurt because _I’ve_ got bad stuff coming for me. I’m the only one who should be getting punished for my past,” he says, and he sounds so tired for a moment that Katie almost wants to reach out and hug him. She also wants to reach out and hit him, though, so she keeps her arms safely crossed over her chest and settles for kicking a rock out of her way.

            “There can’t be anything in your past that says you need to die,” she says wearily.

            “You don’t know what I’ve done,” he says, simply, and Katie wants to demand an answer.

            “No, but I know who you are now, and I know people don’t change a lot. There’s nothing you could have done that’s as bad as you think it is. We’re always the hardest on ourselves,” she says, and this time she does reach out and let her hand rest on his shoulder for a moment. They come to a stop, and he stares at her for a second.

            “You really believe that, don’t you?” he asks her. She lets her hand drop back down to her side awkwardly.

            “Well, yeah. You’re not a bad man, Boone. At least not from where I’m standing,” she says. He smiles a little, despite himself.

            “Let’s keep moving. If we hurry, we can be in Novac before long. It should be a little cooler inside, and we can get clean water whenever we want it,” he says, and they start walking again.

            “It’s a little sad that that almost sounds like paradise right now,” Katie comments, a wry grin on her face.

            “I have a feeling that our definitions of paradise are a lot different,” Boone replies.

            “Oh, I don’t know. Something cold to drink, a few beautiful girls scantily clad in bikinis, and a long few weeks without any responsibilities has to be everyone’s version of paradise,” she says, and if she notices how red his face gets all of a sudden she doesn’t mention it.

* * *

            Katie wasn’t sure what she was expecting when they walked into Novac an hour and a half later, but from what she could see the place was a dumb. It was an old motel that was falling apart- the town got it’s name from the few letters left on the sign. There wasn’t anything to see in Novac, except maybe the dinosaur that dominated the scene, but there was plenty of shade and Boone led his way confidently to a room on the ground floor, a key in his hand, and Katie feels a hell of a lot closer to normal as she follows him. By the time he unlocks the door, Katie’s already got one shoulder shrugged out of her bag and the weight on her hip is familiar and easy to cling to.

            The room they enter is pretty standard for a motel room. It’s been through a nuclear apocalypse and two hundred years, so there’s a little wear and tear, but there’s a big bed in the corner, a television against the wall, a couch underneath the window, and some dressers and tables. There’s a bathroom near the back, too, and Katie remembers her eighteenth birthday. The motel room she spent the night in was actually in worse shape than the one she’s standing in now, but she drops her bag next to the door and sprawls out on the couch before the memories can take hold.

            “I take back anything I said before. This is definitely paradise. The girls in bikinis would make it heaven,” she says, and he chuckles as he shuts the door behind them. It’s hot inside, but it’s a hell of a lot cooler than it is outside so Katie tips her canteen back and empties it. Some spills out onto her chest, but she’s just so damn glad to be out of the heat that she doesn’t care.

            “We can rest for awhile before we go about getting settled in,” Boone says, and Katie groans in relief. If she sees the way he glances around the room like there’s some kind of ghost haunting him, well, she doesn’t mention it.


	10. down to my last broken heart

            Katie laid around just long enough for her feet to stop hurting before she was up and moving again. “I need a bath, Boone. Even my sweat has started to sweat,” she complains, sitting up on the couch. She feels disgustingly grimy from the sweat and the dust clinging to her skin, and she’s sure it’ll do everyone a favor if she can get in the bath.

            “I’ll show you the water pump,” Boone says, standing up and stretching. His shirt rides up his stomach, and Katie finds herself staring at his muscles again. She swallows and tears her gaze away, pointedly refusing to think about any of the fun things they could get up to.

            “Wait, what do you mean? Can’t we just go turn on the taps?” she asks, and she starts to think that maybe this will be a little more than she bargained for.

            “Not in the bath. We couldn’t get the pipes working again. The drain works just fine, and the toilet and sink work, but the pipes bringing water in to the bath were busted beyond repair. So we use an outdoor water pump and carry the water in with buckets,” he explains. Katie groans, and for a long second she contemplates just laying down on the floor and staying there.

            “Fine. I’m filthy enough that I’ll lug enough water in. If I find out you’re just messing with me though, I’ll get my revenge,” she threatens. Boone grins at her, leading the way to the door.

            “I think I can handle you, Katie,” he says, almost casually, and Katie laughs.

            “Oh, I don’t know, Boone. I can be sneaky,” she replies. Boone can’t remember the last time he smiled like this, even though there’s something tugging at his heart whenever he thinks of Carla.

            “Come on. The water pump is this way,” he says, turning almost abruptly. Katie follows him into the desert heat. The water pump is fairly close, just around the back of the motel, but she thinks it’ll feel a lot farther away when she’s carrying buckets full of water.

            “You can pump out hot water here. The cold water isn’t really cold, but it’ll feel cold enough,” he tells her. There’s a few buckets sitting in front of it, and Katie assumes they’re free to use.

            “God, I’ve never missed anything more than I miss my nice convenient shower right now,” she sighs, picking up one of the buckets. She can probably carry two at a time, if she only has to make a few trips, but the buckets aren’t very big and Katie has a feeling she’ll be more exhausted than she thought possible by the time she gets enough water in the tub. She’s too determined to stop now, though.

            “All right. While you’re doing that, I’ll head over to the store and pick up some supplies. When I get back, I’ll take a bath myself,” he says. She nods and starts filling up the buckets as Boone walks away. They’re heavier than she expected when she picks them up, but it’s nothing she can’t handle as she heads back towards the motel room. Boone was nice enough to leave the door open for her, at least. Thirty minutes and ten trips later, she’s got a nice hot bath, just this side of scalding. The soap in the bathroom doesn’t smell like much, but it’s better than nothing and Katie only stops to make sure the door is shut before she heads into the bathroom.

            It’s still just evening, but Katie figures it won’t hurt if she goes ahead and puts on the nightgown she got. Besides, she plans to spend at least an hour scrubbing herself clean in the bath. She’ll be lucky if she’s still got any skin left by the time she finishes, and she only hopes she’ll feel properly clean once she finishes it. She locks the bathroom door behind her- she trusts Boone but she doesn’t trust anyone else in this town, mostly ‘cause she hasn’t met them.

            She starts with her hair and works her way down, scrubbing until her skin is pink. She hears Boone come back about halfway through- he yells to let her know it’s him. By the time she finishes Boone has been standing at the bathroom door for the past ten minutes, asking her repeatedly if she’s drowning. She only gets out because the water’s started to get cold, but she feels a lot closer to human as she dries her hair out and dresses as quickly as possible. She hadn’t realized just how much skin the nightgown showed, but it covered all the important parts so she yanked the bathroom door open just as Boone raised his hand to knock.

            They stared at each other for a few seconds, Boone’s hand still raised in the air as his eyes drift down before snapping back up to her face. Katie can feel herself blushing, but she doesn’t find herself complaining when Boone’s gaze keeps drifting down. “I was starting to think you were going to beat down the door. Do you need to use the bathroom that bad?” Katie asks, raising her eyebrows.

            “I was just getting worried. You were in there for a long time. Besides, I’ve got something for you,” he says, and she notices now how his other arm is hidden behind his back. He finally lowers his other arm, moving it behind his back too.

            “Well, this should be good. Especially since you look that nervous,” she remarks. He clears his throat for a moment before he holds his hand out. It takes her a second to realize he’s handing her a teddy bear. It’s an old, worn thing but it’s clean and soft as she takes it from him, cradling it gently. It’s missing an eye, it’s got several patches, but Katie can’t think of anything else in the world she’d rather have as tears well up in her eyes.

            “You mentioned a teddy bear that you had back home. I know it’s not the same, but I thought it’d help, a little. I saw it in Cliff’s shop, and I remembered you talking about yours and it wasn’t much but I thought it would be something,” he says, his words coming fast until they stop, and for a second Katie just stares at him with a lump in her throat before she throws her arms around him. He’s a little taken aback as he wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on her head.

            There’s a faint knock on the door before it swings open, and everyone freezes. Boone’s head jerks to the side, his hand reaching for the gun on the table before he realizes that it’s just Manny Vargas standing there, awkward as hell. “The, uh, the door wasn’t shut,” Manny says, trying to politely avert his eyes. Katie huffs out a sigh before stepping back, the bear still cradled carefully in her arms. She tries not to think about how much skin she’s got showing right now.

            “Is there something I can do for you, Manny?” Boone asks, his voice stiff. Katie can tell he’s trying to be polite, even if he doesn’t really want to be.

            “I was just stopping by to welcome you back to Novac. You left so quickly none of us were sure you were ever coming back,” Manny answers, and he’s so nervous that Katie is surprised he hasn’t taken off running yet.

            “Well, as you can see I’m back. Not sure how long it’ll be before I take off again, but I’m here for now,” Boone says, crossing his arms over his chest. Katie stands there next to him, looking up at him and then over at Manny. The air is so thick with tension that she could probably cut it with a knife if she wanted.

            “You interested in your old job?” Manny asks. He doesn’t move from the doorway.

            “I’ll start off working half shifts. I’ll head up to the mouth of the Dino about midnight- I’ll cover it until your shift starts up,” Boone replies, almost cautiously.

            “All right then. Is there anything you need?” Manny asks. Boone glances down at Katie before looking back at Manny.

            “Yeah, actually. I was hoping you could help me train my friend here. She wants to learn how to snipe,” Boone says, and Katie looks up at Boone in surprise.

            “I can do that. You have any experience with rifles?” Manny asks, turning to look at Katie. She can see the tips of his ears turning red, and she almost laughs.

            “Not really. I’ve fired a pistol a few times, never in combat though. I’m pretty much a blank slate,” she answers, gently laying the bear down on the edge of the bed and crossing her arms over chest, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

            “Well, this should be fun. I’ll let you and Craig decide which of us will teach you what and we can go from there,” Manny answers. He’s still nervous, and so is Boone. Katie just wishes she knew why the air between them was so rotten.

            “All right, yeah. I’ll talk it over with Boone here and we can start sometime soon. Although anything you can teach me would be appreciated. Like I said, I’ve not got any real combat experience. I could use some lessons on how to not die,” she says, almost cheerfully. Manny smiles before he can help himself, but the smile falls from his face when he sees the way Boone is glaring at him.

            “Right, well. I’ll see you some other time,” he says, his hand reaching blindly for the doorknob. He fumbles for a second before he grabs it, backing out of the room fast enough for the door to slam. Katie tries not to flinch- slamming doors had never been a good thing in her experience. She stands there in the silence with Boone for a minute, until she breaks whatever spell is over them by reaching for the bear.

            “So, what was this old job that Manny mentioned? You weren’t some shady criminal overlord, were you? The whole mob thing would be kinda hot, but I’m too fragile and delicate to get caught up in that,” she asks, almost breezily as she sits down on the couch, propping her feet up on the other end of the couch.

            “Nothing like that. Since Manny and I are snipers, we set up a nest in the mouth of the Dino. It’s a good way to watch the road. If anyone is coming, we see them from miles away. It’s not much, but it’s enough that if the Legion comes after us we’ll have enough time to start evacuating people,” Boone answers, sitting down on the edge of the bed with a faint smile on his face.

            “Do you really think I can learn how to snipe?” she asks, putting one arm behind her head. If she notices how Boone’s eyes keep drifting down or the way his cheeks stay a little pink, she doesn’t mention it. She entertains the idea of it for a second in her head, but she doesn’t want to push the limit.

            “I think so, especially with Manny helping me teach you. We may not be close anymore, but he’s always been a good sniper. I’ll let him handle the more basic elements, though. If you want to head up to the Dino with me sometimes, I can help you aim. I’ve always preferred spotting anyway,” he says.

            “What happened between you and Manny? If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to, but I could feel how tense things were between you,” she asks. Boone sighs, lying back on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head.   
            “Manny never got along with my wife, Carla. They argued all the time. When she turned up missing, he sort of seemed a little glad. I couldn’t handle it, after that,” Boone answers. He glances over at the dresser that he’s kept all of Carla’s things in and swallows.

            “Your wife is missing?” Katie asks, shocked, and she feels a little guilty about all the things she’s thought about doing with Boone.

            “She’s dead now. I…I don’t want to talk about it,” Boone says, his voice suddenly a lot more gruff.

            “Well, I’m here for when you do want to talk about it,” she says. She shifts, curling up on the couch and turning onto her side.

            “Thanks,” Boone says. There’s a moment of silence between them where Katie can almost feel herself drifting off to sleep.

            “Boone?” she asks, after sitting in the silence for a while.

            “Yeah?” he answers, turning to look at her.

            “Thanks again for the bear. It really means a lot,” she says. She thinks she can see him smile, but she’s not sure.

            “You’re welcome. I hope it helps,” he tells her, and after another second of lying there he stands up, turning off the lights before heading over to her. She looks up at him and starts to sit up. He shakes his head, making a shushing sound before he pulls a blanket over her, tucking her in. She makes a soft sound of contentment in the back of her throat as she lays back down, and Boone is smiling when he lays down on the bed, tugging the blanket over himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i genuienly don't know how much filler i'm going to shove in this honestly 
> 
> i had a scene planned for this chapter but i realized it didn't fit with the current character development so maybe next chapter who knows i'm bad at writing relationships 
> 
> as always, please leave a comment and let me know what you think! if you've got any ideas that you'd like to see in the fic, let me know, i'd be glad to consider them and work them in if possible!! if you don't want to leave them in the comments below, you can send me an ask on tumblr. my url is wolfofthewaves 
> 
> enjoy!!!


	11. this wanting you

            Katie slept late the next morning. She was mumbling in her sleep when Boone got up and got dressed to head up to the Dino around midnight, and he stopped to check on her, but she settled down when he put his hand on her shoulder so he headed on out, leaving a note on the floor beside her in case she woke up looking for him. She was still asleep around ten, though, long after Boone had gotten back and had a few hours of shut-eye for himself. It was only then that he decided to try and wake her up, crouching down next to her and shaking her shoulder gently. Katie groaned, curling up, but she shifted closer to him until they were touching. “Katie, you need to get up,” Boone says, his voice soft. He sounds almost amused.

            “Don’t wanna,” she croaks, and she curls even closer. Her eyes finally open as she pushes herself up, and she half-falls off of the couch and into his arms. It’s easy enough to catch her, and he lets out a snort of almost-laughter.

            “You’re usually a lot easier to wake up in the mornings,” he tells her, brushing her hair back out of her face. She groans again, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

            “I don’t feel good,” she mumbles, and she really doesn’t. Her entire body aches, her head hurts, her throat’s sore, and she feels like her nasal passages are so full of snot that her head’s about to burst.

            “What’s wrong?” Boone asks, shifting the two of them around until he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, Katie cradled in his lap.

            “Everything hurts,” she whines. She hates how whiny she is, but she’s always been like this when she’s sick, and she’s so touch-starved she’d rather cut off her own hand than pull away from Boone, even if she ends up making him sick, too.

            “That’s not very specific,” he says, a faint grin on his face, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about her. She doesn’t act like she’s got radiation poisoning, but Boone’s worried anyway.

            “’S true, though,” she says, and then Boone starts rubbing small circles on the small of her back and Katie lets out a pathetic sound as she melts against him.

            “Are you dizzy? Disoriented?” he asks, pulling back enough to press the back of his hand to her forehead. She feels hot, like she’s got a low-grade fever, but it’s enough to make him nervous.

            “I don’t think so? I’m stopped up, so I might get dizzy if I stand up. Everything hurts, though, and I’ve got a headache,” she tells him. It’s sounding less and less like radiation poisoning, though.

            “Anything else? I’m trying to rule out radiation sickness. I don’t want to try hooking you up to Rad-Away unless we absolutely have to,” he says, letting her curl up against his chest again.

            “My throat is sore. I feel cold, too,” she says, shifting so that she can stretch out in an attempt to ease the ache in her muscles. It doesn’t help, so she lets out a huff as Boone wraps his arms around her again.

            “Definitely doesn’t sound like radiation sickness. It’s probably just some kind of bug you picked up,” he says, relieved, as he starts rubbing circles on her back again. She almost melts into the touch, and Boone wonders if she’s like this when she’s not sick or upset.

            “It still sucks,” she complains, and Boone chuckles. She wiggles and shifts until her face is pressed against his chest, his heart thudding in her ear.

            “I was going to try and start teaching you how to snipe today, but it looks like we’ll have to postpone that. Go ahead and go to sleep- maybe you can sleep it off. If we’re lucky, it’s nothing serious, and you can power through it in a few days,” he murmurs, his thumb running up and down on her arm. The beat of his heart is steady in her ear, and it’s not long before it lulls her asleep again.

* * *

            She wakes up a couple hours later. She doesn’t feel any better, but her mouth is drier than the desert outside and she’s got to pee so bad her bladder feels like it’s about to bust. Boone has fallen asleep against the couch, the blanket draped over them both haphazardly. Katie tries to keep from waking him up, but even so he lets out a soft sound of complaint and shifts. Katie grimaces, but once she’s sure she hasn’t woken him up, she heads for the bathroom. She almost doesn’t bother to shut the door behind her, but she’s too afraid he’ll wake up and walks in on her, so she does. She lets out a groan of relief once she’s done peeing, and she sits there for a second, trying to work up the energy to stand up. Her head is throbbing, and her stomach is rolling uncomfortably as she flushes the toilet.

            Part of her knows she’s about to throw up, but the bigger part of her is trying desperately to ignore it as she turns the sink on, cupping a handful of water into her mouth and drinking it. It’s not cold, but it’s cool, and her stomach rolls again. Seconds later, she’s abandoning the sink while it’s still running, crouching over the toilet and voiding her entire stomach. There wasn’t much in it- she hadn’t eaten since last night, but the noise of her gagging must wake Boone, because it’s not long until he’s knocking on the bathroom door. “Katie? Are you okay?” he calls out. She doesn’t trust herself to answer him, but she sits back and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before opening the door. She opens her mouth to say something, but then she’s diving for the toilet again, barely making it in time. Boone swears softly, kneeling down and pulling her hair back, rubbing her back as she gags and retches, long after her stomach is well and truly empty. She lets herself lean back against him eventually, suddenly exhausted. Boone’s reminded of Carla, for a moment, not long before she’d gone missing. She’d just started to get morning sickness. He’d found himself in this position several times until she’d disappeared.

            “This is the worst thing ever,” Katie groans, and Boone’s attention snaps back to the present. He makes a sympathetic sound in the back of his throat.

            “I’ve got some stuff that might help. Give me a minute,” he says, standing up. Katie nods, exhausted, and pulls herself up by the edge of the sink. Boone heads back into the motel’s main room to make a tea with a mix of plants he’s got. He’s not an expert by any means, but he knows what’ll help with the nausea and he knows what might ease the ache in her muscles. Katie, meanwhile, is swishing water in her mouth, trying to get rid of the sick taste left in her mouth. When she finally stumbles out of the bathroom, she almost falls onto the bed before curling up.

            It’s only a few minutes later that Boone is coaxing her into a sitting position, sliding in beside her and propping her up as he presses a warm mug of tea into her hands. He’s an expert at brewing this stuff by now- Carla was drinking it for her morning sickness before she’d been taken- and it’s hot but not boiling, the perfect temperature to start drinking. Katie eyes it suspiciously, sniffing at the dark amber liquid. “What is it?” she asks, her voice hoarse.

            “Tea. It should help with the nausea and the muscle aches, maybe even the headache,” he tells her. She raises her eyebrows at him, curling into his side.

            “It won’t make me sick, will it? Because I’d rather die of dehydration than go through that again,” she asks, but she takes a sip of it anyway. It’s not sweet, not exactly, but it tastes like mint and honey and it eases the soreness of her throat.

            “No, it won’t make you sick. Let me know if you start feeling any worse, though. There’s a doctor just outside town,” he says, as Katie drains the rest of the tea, sitting the mug on the table next to the bed before curling up against Boone again.

            “Ugh, doctors are the worst. Of course, I guess here, there’s a lot less silent and sterile waiting rooms,” she says, almost wistfully.

            “There’s not much of anything here that’s sterile,” Boone tells her, a faint smile on his face. Katie can’t keep a smile off of her own face.

            “So, what’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Katie asks. She’s not too inclined to get up, no matter what he suggests, though.

            “I didn’t have any. There’s only so much sleeping someone can do, but we’ve not got much else to keep us occupied, not with you being sick,” he says, shifting them upwards until he can lean back against the headboard.

            “I’ve got an idea,” she says, crawling over him and reaching for her phone. She can just barely reach it, pressed up against him, her fingertips scrabbling along the smooth surface. He shifts, looking interested, and if Katie wasn’t so sick, she’d be thinking of all the other situations they could be in with him underneath her like that. She’s definitely not thinking of all the situations that would have her underneath him as she picks her phone up, curling up against his side again.

            “What’s this idea?” he asks, peering at the screen as she unlocks it.

            “I’ve got a few movies on here, and a couple episodes of Ghost Adventures. I’ve not got a lot, just a few things to watch when I’m going to be stuck somewhere for a long time. We could watch something,” she answers. She’s still glad she got that extra SD card- she’s got so much space on her phone now she doubts she’ll ever be able to fill it up, especially since there’s not much she can actually do with her phone now.

            “Sounds fun,” Boone says, almost cautiously. She’s grinning as she settles back against him, arranging herself in a way that’ll let them both see the screen as she presses play.

            “The screen’s small, but it’ll work,” she says, turning the volume up.

            “I’ve never seen a movie before,” Boone says. Katie looks up at him, but then the movie’s starting and she doesn’t want to distract him, so she turns her attention back to her phone. She’s seen this movie dozens of times already, but it’s one of her favorites. She’s nodding off before they’re even ten minutes in, but she could recite the whole script by heart if she wanted. Boone shifts a little, taking the phone from her hand so she can sleep.

* * *

            Katie’s fever breaks later that evening, and she feels a lot better already. Boone makes her another cup of tea with a meal of bland rice, and he leaves her to sleep fitfully when he heads up to the Dino. This routine continues for the next three days, and by then Katie’s back to normal. Manny had stopped by once, on the second day, and he’d sat with her for an hour or so until she’d fallen asleep again. He was nice enough, and he kept her distracted by telling her about Novac, and about himself, too. She felt a little rude, falling asleep in the middle of the conversation, but she remembers Manny chuckling and pulling the blanket over her before she was out completely, so she supposes he didn’t mind too much.

* * *

            On the fourth morning after she woke up sick, she wakes up at six in the morning. She feels fine, now, and she feels even better after the bath she’d had the night before. She knows Boone is still in the Dinosaur, so she thinks she’ll head up there. It doesn’t take long to get dressed, and she’s sure to grab her phone and the key Boone left before heading out.

            It’s already hot, even though the sun is shining weak. A man is walking into the Dino when she steps out of the motel room, and she assumes it’s Cliff. She’s never met the man, but Boone’s told her a little about him. All she knows is that he’s the one who runs the Dino. She steps inside a few seconds after him, as he’s stepping behind the counter. It’s nice, inside, even if the paint is peeling off the walls, and the first thing Katie notices is a guitar hanging up on the wall. It’s in almost perfect condition- the surface has a few scratches and scrapes, and the leather shoulder strap looks a little worn. Katie knows she should probably save her money, but she can’t stop herself from stepping up to the counter.

            “Hello, miss. Welcome to Novac. Is there something specific you’re looking for?” Cliff asks her. He’s got an air of small-town friendliness about him that makes Katie think of home, and she smiles a little.

            “Yeah. I was wondering how much that guitar up there is,” she says. The door upstairs opens and Boone steps into view, stopping when he sees her.

            “I’ll make you the same deal I’ve made everyone else who asks about it. If you can prove you can play it, it’s yours, free of charge,” Cliff says, and there’s a warm and open smile on his face.

            “You’ve got a deal,” Katie says, and as Cliff is getting the instrument off the wall, Manny walks in to start his shift in the Dino.

            “There’s fixin’ to be a show here, if you wanna stick around for a few minutes,” Cliff says, over his shoulder, and Manny nods, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

            Katie takes the guitar from Cliff gently, running her fingers over the smooth surface. She hadn’t thought she’d get to play one again, not anytime soon, so she’s almost reverent as she holds it. There’s a stool in the corner, so that’s where Katie heads, pulling it closer to the center of the room and hopping up on it. She settles the guitar across her lap and looks up, her eyes meeting Boone’s. He gives her a small nod of encouragement from where he stands on the stairs, and Katie looks back down, her face flushing. She hopes it’s dark enough that they can’t tell, but based on the smirk on Manny’s face, she’s sure they can. She spends a couple of minutes tuning the thing before she starts to play, clearing her throat. She gets an idea in her head- maybe she can show her interest this way, even if it’ll come back to bite her in the ass. The first few chords are a little rough, but then she remembers the tune and it smooths out as she starts to sing, her eyes flicking between her fingers on the guitar and Boone.

_“If you’re heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_Maybe it would like to get with mine._

_If you’re heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_I could keep it occupied for a long, long time._

_If your lips ain’t got something pressing to do,_

_If your arms aren’t held up, they’re invited too._

_If your heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_Maybe it would like to get with mine, any time._

_Well it’s kind of you, to lend me an ear._

_That’s a start but I believe_

_If I could only get the rest of you over here,_

_Then all of you might fall in love with all of me._

_If your heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_Maybe it would like to get with mine, anytime._

_If your feet are restless for somewhere to go,_

_And your eyes want something more to see._

_Why don’t you let them lead the rest of you to my door,_

_So all of you can fall in love with all of me._

_If your heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_Maybe it would like to get with mine._

_If your heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_I could keep it occupied for a long, long time._

_Yes I could._

_If your lips ain’t got something pressing to do,_

_If your arms aren’t held up, they’re invited too._

_If your heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_Maybe it would like to get with mine, anytime._

_If your heart ain’t busy tonight,_

_Maybe it would like to get with mine.”_

            She finishes up with a grin, her eyes flicking up to Boone. She’s not sure if she’s imagining it or if his face is a little red. Katie knows her face is red as she turns to look at Cliff. “So, am I good enough, or would you like me to sing something else?” she asks.

            “It’s yours, little lady, although anytime you want to play for me, I’m not going to turn you down,” Cliff says, laughing. Manny looks at Katie pointedly before glancing over at Boone. Katie pretends like she doesn’t see, getting real interested in the case that Cliff is pulling out from underneath the counter.

            “Well, I may take you up on that. Boone’s probably going to get real tired of hearing me play,” she says, gently settling the guitar down in the case. Boone makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and his face is definitely red as he heads to the door.

            “This was great, but I should really get back and get some shut-eye,” Boone says, and Katie knows she’s not imagining the way he’s walking a little faster than normal.

            “So,” Manny says, stepping closer, “do you want to get started? I can teach you some of what I know up in the mouth of the Dino. You can leave your new toy with Cliff, here. He’s kept it safe for the last couple of years, so I’m sure he’ll keep it safe for a few more hours.” There’s something in his eyes that tells Katie he’s definitely got some questions to ask, but the desire to be a little less helpless is a lot more appealing than fleeing back to the room.

            “Sure thing, especially since Boone needs his sleep,” Katie answers, and Manny’s grinning too as he heads up the steps. Cliff is shaking his head as Katie climbs up after him, sliding the guitar under his counter, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious how everything would play out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if ur curious the movie they watched was Fried Green Tomatoes bc that's my sick-day movie
> 
> also, annoucement time, the title of this fic will be changing in a couple of days to "gotta make it big in vegas". since i'm trash and take all of my titles from songs or poems, i decided that the song "big in vegas" by buck owens fits the tone of this story more than "don't take your guns to town" by johnny cash does. i'll leave this title up for a couple more days so people can have a chance to see it, but then i'll change it~
> 
> once again, if there's any interactions or scenes you'd like to see, shoot them my way, and i'll try to work them in somewhere. as always, please leave a comment and let me know what you think! thank you so much for all of the lovely reviews you've left so far!


	12. digging up bones

            It turns out that Manny wasn’t bad at teaching. He didn’t want to teach her too much- he told her he was afraid of stepping on Boone’s toes- but he did have her taking the gun apart and putting it back together enough that she could do it in her sleep. It turns out that guns were easy enough to take apart, and just as easy to put back together.

            “So, Katie, mind if I ask some questions?” Manny asks, looking out over the Mojave through his binoculars. Katie doubted there was much of anything out there to see, but she kept dutifully working over the rifle, stripping it down to the bare basics. He’d told her he’d teach her later how to modify it, and she’d be lying if she said wasn’t at least a little excited.

            “Well, you just asked one. I suppose more can’t hurt,” she answers, looking up in time to see him roll his eyes at her. She can’t keep the grin off of her face.

            “Very funny. Anyway, based on that little display down there, you like him, don’t you?” Manny asks. Katie tenses up, but she keeps working on the gun. She knew a question like that was coming; she just hadn’t expected him to be so damn blunt about it.

            “Well, yeah, sort of. I wanted him to know I was interested, anyway. Think I got the message across?” she asks, as she starts to put the gun back together.

            “Did you see how red his face was? I’d say he definitely got the message. It’s a shame, though. You’re pretty enough that anyone would want to go after you, and he’s too busy being trapped in his own grief,” Manny tells her. Katie looks up, and this time she stops working for a second.

            “Well, I don’t mind sharing. Or being shared,” she says breezily, looking down again as she resumes working, fighting a grin as he makes a choked sound in the back of his throat.

            “Someone’s open about her preferences,” Manny comments. He doesn’t make it awkward, though, and Katie appreciates that.

            “Someone has to be. Hell, even if you are open about what you want and what you don’t want, some people just don’t give a shit,” she replies, making a face.

            “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” he murmurs. She shrugs, holding the gun out to him so he could inspect her handiwork.

            “A bit. Some people don’t want to take no for an answer, regardless of how much you say,” she answers. He nods, handing the gun back to her.

            “I hope you can find something better here, then. Novac’s a pretty good town, though, if I do say so myself,” he says, looking back out over the Wasteland. There isn’t much happening out there, but as small as Novac is, it’d be strange if there was.

            “Well, I’d think a lot more highly of it if I didn’t have to carry water for thirty minutes every time I want to take a damn bath. I miss the convenience of being able to turn a knob and fill the tub,” Katie says, sighing wistfully.

            “The bathtub in my room is fully functional. I tried to get Craig to take my room, since he was with Carla and all, but she said she didn’t mind,” he tells her. Katie stops moving entirely, staring at Manny with wide eyes.

            “Manny. You have a fully functional bathtub in your room? You don’t have to carry water?” she asks, her voice quiet. She can’t remember the last time she was so excited over something as mundane as a working bathtub. Oh, how the mighty fall.

            “No, not usually. If I want really cold water or really hot water I do, since the water that comes out is pretty lukewarm, but most of the time I don’t bother,” he says, almost cautiously.

            “Okay, listen, I just want you to know I’d literally kill a man to have daily access to your bathtub. Just saying. Not that I want to impose or anything,” she says, standing up and putting her hands on the dinosaur’s teeth as she stares pointedly out at the Wasteland.

            “Katie, would you like permission to come use my bathtub?” Manny asks, rolling his eyes. He’s grinning, though, when she glances at him out of the corner of her eyes.

            “Well, I meant it about not wanting to impose. If you don’t want me in your space, that’s fair. But hell yeah, I’d do anything to get to use your bathtub. You don’t understand how horrific it’s been not being able to bathe every day. I bet I’d have gotten better in, like, a day and a half,” she says, sighing wistfully. She thinks again of the nice, hot shower back in her dorm room. A lukewarm bath will be a far cry from that, but it’ll be a hell of a lot better than having to carry buckets of water every few days.

            “Feel free to stop by anytime, then. On one condition,” Manny says, his voice taking on a sudden seriousness despite the amusement in his voice. Katie turns to look at him as a gentle breeze blows her hair back out of her face.

            “What’s that?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest, a faint smile still on her face. She doesn’t have a clue what he’s about to ask, but she trusts him enough.

            “You take care of Craig. He’s stubborn as hell and doesn’t want to admit that he needs someone, but he ain’t been the same since Carla went missing. He’s still pissed at me, but you? You probably have him wrapped around your finger already,” Manny says. Katie thinks of the haunted look that appears in Boone’s eyes sometimes- she doesn’t know anything about Carla, but she knows enough to know that Boone is thinking about her then.

            “I’ll do my best. And I’ll try to do it without pissing him off,” she promises. _Too bad I didn’t major in psychology. Bet I could be real useful out here in the Mojave,_ she thinks to herself.

            “Good. He needs someone. He won’t let me be there for him, but I think he’ll let you,” Manny tells her. He looks relieved, almost, like he’s glad someone is finally able to take care of Boone.

            “I’ll try to talk him into trying to patch things up with you. I don’t know what went on between you two, not really, but you’d probably do a lot of good for him,” she says. She double checks the rifle, making sure everything’s back together and secured before checking the safety.

            “I’d appreciate it, Katie. It’d be nice to call him my friend again,” Manny says, leaning back against the wall. Katie nods, looking around for a brief moment.

            “Well, I guess I should get back, especially if I want to go out for a run. I’ll see you around, Manny,” she says, giving him a soft smile.

            “See you,” Manny says, returning the smile as he turns back to look over the Wasteland. It was a boring job, but it put dinner on the table.

* * *

            She stopped to pick up the guitar from Cliff, and even managed to buy a pair of shorts while she was there. She hadn’t been too fond of the idea of running in jeans, and now it seemed like she wouldn’t have to. He said he trusted her enough to bring the caps by later, and Katie was a little relieved at the thought of stretching her legs. Even though she bitched about it, there was something about running that she loved. Maybe it was the rhythmic slap of her feet on the asphalt, maybe it was the screaming muscles in her legs or the burn of her lungs, but there was something that made it easy to settle into once she started.

            She tried to be as quiet as she could as she eased open the door to Boone’s motel room. Boone was curled up on the bed and the room was dark, but the second the door opened he shot up, the sheets bunching around his waist as he looked around wildly, his eyes wide and panicked. Katie hurried to step through the door and shut it behind her, dropping the guitar and the shorts on the floor. “Katie?” he asks, his voice thin from panic.

            “It’s me. Are you okay?” she asks, stepping forward hesitantly.

            “I…It’s nothing. Just a nightmare,” he says, his eyes squeezing shut. Katie moves slowly as she takes a seat on the bed, reaching out towards him. She lets her hand stop halfway, almost afraid of touching him.

            “Do you want to tell me about it?” she asks, her voice gentle. Boone’s hand finds hers in the sheets and she laces her fingers through his as he squeezes.

            “It was about Carla. Maybe it’s time I tell you about her,” he murmurs, before he kicks the sheets off.

            “Only if you’re ready. I don’t want to push you on anything like that,” Katie says, rubbing her thumb over Boone’s knuckles. His hand dwarfs hers, but all she can think about is how lost he looks.

            “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. But I think I should tell you anyway,” he says, staring down at the floor. Katie shifts, moving closer.

            “If you want,” she tells him, keeping her eyes on his face for signs of distress.

            “The Legion came one night. Kidnapped her. The previous mayor had sold Carla to them, and told them what routes to take. They only took her. I was on watch when it happened. I managed to follow them, once I knew. They took her to Cottonwood Cove, a Legion slave camp. I knew what life was like for slaves of the Legion. It’s worse if the slaves are women. All I had was my rifle, and they had the whole camp. I did what I could; put Carla out of her misery. Never liked mercy killings, but it was worse because it was her,” Boone says, and he can feel the guilt rising up.

            “Oh, Boone,” Katie murmurs, reaching for him. She pulls him into a hug, and he only hesitates for a second before hiding his face in the crook of her neck, his fingers clutching at the loose fabric of her shirt. She wonders, for a second, what the Legion does to female slaves. She prays she never finds out.

            “I didn’t just kill Carla, Katie. She was pregnant. I killed my child, too,” Boone says, his voice muffled, and then he’s crying, his body wracked by sobs. Katie holds him as tight as she can, rocking back and forth a little and making soft noises in the back of her throat.

            “I’m so sorry, Boone. You shouldn’t have had to go through that. No one should ever have to go through that,” she murmurs, her hand rubbing circles in the center of his back. She doesn’t know how long they sit like that, but Boone keeps his face hidden until long after his tears have dried up. She keeps rocking, back and forth, but she’s long since stopped doing it intentionally.

            He pulls back eventually, though. His eyes are red and a little swollen, and there’s a big wet patch on her shirt, but none of that matters. “It…It’s easier, I think, now that I’ve told someone,” he whispers. Katie nods, squeezing his hand.

            “Anytime you want to talk, Boone, I’m willing to listen,” she tells him. He nods and takes a deep breath, rubbing his hands over his face.

            “Thanks. Right now, though, I think I need another nap,” he mumbles, lying back down.

            “All right. I’m going to head out on a run. I won’t go far- I’ll probably just run up and down the road outside of town,” she says. Boone nods, running his fingers through his hair and frowns a little. He still hasn’t gotten it cut, but now he thinks he might let it grow back out.

* * *

            Katie underestimated the heat of the desert. She’d only been running for twenty minutes before she stopped, bent double as she gasps for air. She feels almost sick to her stomach from the heat, and she can feel her skin getting sunburnt, but it felt nice to run, even though she had to cut it a little short. She stands up again, staggering for Novac even though she’s still panting. She’d been stupid enough to leave water behind, but Cliff meets her at the gate, holding out a fresh bottle of water. She accepts it wordlessly, her fingers shaking on the cap as she leans back against the gate and chugs. Water spills down her face, soaking her shirt, but she’s never felt anything more glorious.

            “Cliff, man, you’re a lifesaver,” she says, once she’s able to breathe again. He chuckles, taking the bottle back from her. She nods gratefully as she swipes the back of her wrist over her forehead.

            “I stepped out for a bite of lunch and saw you running. Thought you might need some water,” he says, a friendly smile on his face.

            “You have more sense than I do. Hey, I have a question for you. I know Boone’s still upset about Carla. I think it’s worse, being here in the place he shared with her. Do you have anything that could help? Maybe a new bedspread, some new curtains? Just enough to make the place look a little different,” Katie asks. She thinks back to the stash of caps that Six left them, and she wonders how much she could get away with spending.

            “I think I’ve got some curtains in stock, and a bedspread too. I think I’ve got some paintings you could hang up on the wall, too. It’d be expensive, though. Easily up to two hundred caps,” he tells her, looking apologetic.

            “Well, hell, there’s no way he’ll let me spend two hundred caps on that, no matter how much it might help him. I don’t suppose there’s another deal you’d be willing to work out? I’m not good at much, but I can sing and I can play and I can cook if I get the right ingredients,” she says, sighing a little.

            “I think we can work something out. You come and play for a few hours every day, and come and cook me supper every once in awhile, and I’ll consider the debt paid. And if you find out you like playing for a living, maybe you can take it up seriously if you ever get to Vegas,” he tells her, a twinkle in his eye.

            “Cliff, have I ever mentioned how much of a lifesaver you are?” she asks, relieved. After everything that Boone’s done for her, maybe she can help him with something.

            “You might have mentioned it once or twice. Come by the Dino once Boone heads up for his shift. I’ll stay late just for you, and we can keep it our secret until he gets back,” Cliff says. Katie’s eyes light up.

            “You’re a damned genius, my guy. I owe you one for this, Cliff,” she says, grinning. Cliff nods at her, handing the bottle of water back to her before patting her on the shoulder and ambling back towards the dinosaur. Katie heads back towards the room, a spring in her step, and it’s still plenty early enough for her to take a bath. Today, it seems, has been a very good day for her indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have so many ideas and it's taking me so long to get to any of them lmao 
> 
> anyway, i hope you guys enjoyed! please leave a comment letting me know what you think, and if you have any questions or just want to chat, feel free to message me over at tumblr. (you can also prompt me at anytime, and if there's any scenes you'd like to see in this, feel free to send them my way! i'll do my best to try and incorporate them!)


	13. dang me

            It had been easy enough to get all of the new things into Boone’s bedroom. Cliff helped Katie carry it- a new bedspread, a new set of curtains, and two different paintings to hang up on the wall. It had even been easy enough to change them; she’d just had to climb on top of the back of the couch to change the curtains, and she’d had to get Cliff to help her hang the paintings. It was afterwards that Katie made a bad decision, dumping half a box of detergent she found in the bathtub with the old bedspread and curtains. She hadn’t anticipated the amount of suds that would create, and she hadn’t anticipated how much work it would take to hand wash an entire bedspread. Three hours later Boone found her kneeling in front of the bathtub, up to her armpits in soapy water. She was exhausted, soaked, her head was aching, and she just wanted to go to sleep.

            “Katie?” Boone asks, opening the door.

            “In the bathroom,” comes the response. She hears Boone’s heavy footsteps heading towards the bathroom, pausing for a moment before his head peers around the corner.

            “What are you doing?” he asks her, his brows furrowing as he takes in the scene. The front of her shirt is absolutely soaked as she looks up at him.

            “My best?” she offers, a faint grin on her face. He stares at her, one eyebrow raised.

            “What _did_ you do, then?” he asks, gesturing to the bedroom.

            “I thought it might help, if things were different. I knew that nothing had been changed since well before Carla, so I thought it might help you if things were a little different. Then I decided I’d go ahead and wash this stuff so we could just keep it in a cabinet or something but I didn’t anticipate how much work that was going to be,” she answers, leaning back. Soapy water drips off of her arms and onto the cracked tile floor as Boone leans against the doorway.

            “How much money did you spend on this? Not that I’m not flattered, Katie, but we have a limited supply,” he asks, fighting to keep the smile off of his face.

            “None. I knew you wouldn’t want to spend that many caps on something like this, no matter how much it might help you, so I worked out a deal with Cliff. He said if I cook for him a few times a week and play for a few hours every day that he’d consider the debt paid,” she answers. She starts to wipe her arm across her forehead, trying to get her hair out of the way, but she takes one look at the suds clinging to her skin before she reconsiders.

            “Well, you’re good at making deals, I’ll give you that,” he says, reaching out and pushing her hair out of her face for her. Just then, there’s a bark as Rex darts through the door, careening through the room before jumping directly into the bath. Boone swears and Katie shrieks, her arms coming up to cover her face a second too late.

            “Rex, what the hell are you doing here?” Boone asks, still swearing under his breath as he turns to look towards the front door. Six doesn’t walk through it, though, so he turns his attention back to Katie, a little puzzled.

            “Hey, there’s something in his collar,” she says, wiping her hands on her jeans before reaching down and uncurling a piece of paper. The handwriting is neat, impossibly tiny, and just a little smudged from the water.

_Boone + Katie,_

_If you’re reading this, then it means Rex made it back_

_to Novac without me. I found an old radio broadcast_

_about a place called the Sierra Madre. God knows if anyone needs_

_a new beginning, it’ll be me. Dunno what’s up with this_

_broadcast, but it’s a little suspicious. I’m going to check it_

_out. Don’t know how long I’ll be, but don’t worry._

_I’ll be fine. I always am. Boone, you take care of_

_Katie ~~(and my dog).~~ When I finish with whatever I find here_

_I’ll head back to Novac. Don’t feel like you’re stuck there, though,_

_I’ll find a room and wait around if you’re not there. Katie, don’t_

_let Boone get you thinking the Mojave is nothing but doom_

_and gloom. It’s a nice place, if you know the right people._

_I’m sorry I took off like I did- I was never any good_

_at dealing with people or feelings. You have my full_

_permission to yell at me when you see me again. I_

_shouldn’t have pitched that fit when things must be_

_so hard on you. I know what it’s like, not having_

_a home all of a sudden. For what it’s worth, the_

_Wasteland is lucky to have you. We’ll talk more when_

_I get back. You get a free pass for any three questions_

_you wanna ask me, kiddo. I hope to see you_

_both before too long._

_-Six_

            “What is it?” Boone asks, moving forward.

            “A note from Six. She found a radio broadcast that she’s investigating. Something about a place called Sierra Madre,” Katie tells him, passing him the note. He looks over it as Katie struggles to pull Rex out of the tub.

            “Sounds like bad news. Hope she knows what she’s doing,” he mutters, folding the note again.

            “Rex, c’mon, man, don’t be like this. Isn’t this going to mess up all the robot parts? Just get out of the water,” Katie pleads. Rex barks, licking her in the face. She groans, and Boone has to hide his laugh with a cough.

            “Rex, out,” Boone orders, his voice much more stern than Katie’s, and the dog jumps out of the water instantly. He shakes, soaking the parts of Katie that had been dry, and Boone has to hide his grin behind his hand.

            “Why won’t he listen to me? Was I too nice? Why am I always too nice?” she mumbles, yawning.

            “The dog knows you’re a pushover,” Boone tells her, and his lips are still curling up in a faint smile.

            “Well, as long as that makes me his favorite,” she sighs.

            “I’m sure you are. Anyway, just leave that stuff in the tub for the night. It’s late, and I know you’re tired. Let’s go hose the soap off of you and get you in the bed,” he tells her.

            “What the fuck do you mean ‘hose me down?’ Is that actually what we’re going to do?” she asks, glancing down. She’s doubts there’s anything left that’s dry, so she supposes it’s not a big deal, but she still finds herself wrinkling her nose at the idea.

            “Sort of. I was just going to dump a bucket of water over your head and call it a night,” he says, and with the grin on his face she can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

            “You know what? Let’s do it. As long as I get some sleep, I’m game,” she says, pushing herself to her feet. He leads her outside to the water pump, a towel thrown over his shoulder, Rex following them with his tail wagging. Sure enough, Boone just sticks a bucket under the pump and lets it fill with water.

            “Please tell me you’ve got a shirt I can borrow after this. I’m going to be _freezing_ ,” she says, her arms crossed over her chest.

            “I think we can find something,” he says, and then he turns the bucket over her head. She splutters, reaching up and swiping the water out of her eyes.

            “Boone, you ass, you could have given me some warning!” she complains, but she’s grinning as he drapes the towel around her shoulders.

            “Thought it was more fun this way,” he says, but he’s smiling too as he leads her back inside. He digs through one of the dresser drawers, pulling one of his old shirts out of it. It’s big, even on him, and he’s pretty sure it’ll come down longer than that damned nightgown she got. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear Ralph sold it to her just to torment him.

            “Just toss your clothes in with the rest whenever you changed. We’ll deal with it tomorrow,” he says. She nods, disappearing into the bathroom. He waits until she comes back before ruffling her hair and heading back out, whistling to get Rex’s attention. She passes out almost as soon as her head hits her pillow.

* * *

            The sun is setting over the horizon when Six finds the bunker. She’s roughed up after a couple of spats with some Legion boys, but they’re dead and she’s crawling down the ladder into the bunker, so she likes to think that she did damn well for herself.

            It’s clear the bunker has been empty for a long time. The air is still and hushed, and something about the place makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She unsheathes the machete at her side- she’d started running low on ammo on her way here, so she’d taken it from one of the legionnaires she’d killed.

            “Please tell me this bunker has another pretty girl for me,” she mutters under her breath, glancing around warily. The walls are covered in graffiti painted over Brotherhood of Steel motifs, all of it about the Sierra Madre.   _Well, hell, I was hoping this would be the wrong place,_ she thinks to herself, but she shifts her grip on the machete and heads deeper into the bunker, stepping warily. There is a corpse off to the side, old enough that it is well-decayed but not so old that there is nothing left. She wrinkles her nose, her stomach turning uneasily, and leans down to rifle through the backpack next to it. She finds a few things of use- a few bullets, a handful of caps, a stimpack. She throws them into her own pack and carries on.

            The broadcast is getting louder and clearer, and she can hear it faintly from another source. She brings her Pip-Boy up, silencing the radio on it, and follows her ears deeper into the bunker.

            She finds the source in an empty room, a radio placed upon a table. She frowns, sheathing her machete, and takes another step into the room. There is a half-second where she can hear a hissing sound before the air feels with sickly sweet gas.

            “Oh, fuck,” she says, and she slides to the ground, her head heavy and her eyes flickering shut, no matter how hard she tries to fight it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, hey guys, i'm finally back!! i'm sorry it took me so long to update this- i was working on a piece for the RFOBB (which you should totally check out, it was a blast to work on), a piece for the upcoming MEBB, and updating another fic i'd nearly abandoned (it's a modern insert like this one- if you're into dragon age, check it out as well!). 
> 
> hopefully updates will resume more regularly, but i'm not 100% sure where exactly to take it from here. i've got a few senarios written out, but most of them are for later on in the story. so, i guess, if you have any suggestions for anything you'd like to see, let me know in a comment (or you can send an ask to my tumblr, wolfofthewaves). 
> 
> i'd also like to mention that i have character tags on tumblr for both katie and six, although some of the content in them may be spoilery in terms of where this is going to go. feel free to check them out for aesthetics and posts that remind me of them if you don't mind stuff that might possibly spoil/tease at what's to come. i also have a spotify playlist for this fic, if anyone is interested let me know and i'll try to figure out a way to get a link to that. see you next time!!!


	14. dreamin' in this sleepy town

            Katie settled into a routine soon enough. Every other day, she’d wake up when Boone got back from his shift at the Dino, get dressed, and head over to Cliff’s store with her guitar. On the days she didn’t play at the store, she’d cook something and take it over to Cliff’s in the evening. Sometimes, Boone would stay up longer than he probably should have, dragging her up to the mouth of the Dino to teach her how to shoot. He and Manny had set up targets, garishly painted pieces of scrap wood, out in the wasteland, easy pickings from the Dino. It was one of those mornings, the wind barely blowing as Boone stood behind her, his chest pressed against her back. They’re both kneeling on the hard wooden planks, a stand for the gun set up between two of the Dino’s teeth. One of Boone’s hands has snaked its way around her waist, splaying out across her stomach to hold the two of them steady.

            “Now, the most important thing to watch out for is the recoil. These rifles kick like a pissed Brahmin, and if you aren’t careful you’ll end up dislocating your shoulder. That’s why Manny and I rigged this stand up for you,” he says, his breath ghosting over the back of her neck. She swallows, nodding.

            “So, what if I’m out in the field, and I don’t have a convenient gun stand? Do I just dislocate my shoulder?” Katie asks, shifting in an attempt to take the pressure off of her knees. It didn’t do much, but somehow she ends up pressed even closer to Boone. She wonders how she’ll manage to hit any of the targets with him this close to her.

            “You need to build up some upper body strength. Manny and I will start working on routine to help with that in a couple of days. Wait! Do you see that gecko over there?” he asks, pointing with the hand that isn’t wrapped around her. It takes her a second, but she finally sees the thing. It looks small from where she’s at, but she knows that the things come up to her waist at the least, and most of them come up to her chest.

            “Yeah. Want me to try and hit it?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. She licks her lips, and tries to focus on aiming the gun instead of the warmth of his body.

            “Yeah. Here, let me help,” he says, and his hands move up to the gun. She finds herself missing the warmth of his hand, and the steadiness he provided, but it’s also easier to focusing on aiming at the gecko instead.

            The gecko, for its part, is just standing on the top of a sand dune, rubbing its face with its paws. Boone helps her adjust the rifle, then moves his hand back to her stomach and braces the other on the wall of the Dino’s mouth.

            “Remember what I taught you,” he murmurs, his voice low in her ear as she looks through the scope. She lets out a breath, and in the stillness before she takes another, she presses the trigger. The shot rings out, and even with the stand the gun kicks back enough to leave a bruise on her shoulder. The gecko drops dead, though, so Katie doesn’t pay the bruise no mind as she shifts to look over her shoulder at Boone, her eyes bright.

            “Boone! We did it! We killed a gecko!” she says, and she wonders how much she’s changed, to celebrate killing something, but she’s already thinking of all the meals she can cook with gecko, and all the caps they’ll get out of the parts she can’t use.

            “You killed a gecko,” he tells her, and there’s something like pride in his voice as he pushes himself up, turning around to pull her to her feet.

            “Wait, you aren’t gonna make me skin it or anything gross like that, are you?” she asks, glancing down at the knife on his belt.

            “No, but you are going to have to watch me. You may have to do it yourself one day,” he says, a faint grin on his face as she wrinkles her nose.

            “I did ask for you to teach me survival skills,” she says, picking the gun up and flicking the safety on. She follows him down the steps of the Dino, waving to Cliff as they leave.

            “Next one you kill, though, you’re going to have to help me skin it,” he says, and her groan echoes across the desert, even though the thought of a next time isn’t unappealing.

 

* * *

 

            Six wakes up in a city cloaked in red. She rubs her eyes, groaning, half-convinced she’s lost her mind. The metallic smell of copper clings to her skin and coats her tongue, though, and it’s enough to convince her that whatever hell this she’s managed to wake up in is real enough. The second thing she notices is the collar sitting heavy around her neck. Her hand flies up to it, her fingers skimming along the surface, and her heart starts hammering against her rib cage. She’s familiar enough with this type of collar and her mind is screaming _LEGION_ at her.

            There ain’t no flag she can see, though, much less one with the painfully familiar Bull sewn onto the side, and while she’s not wearing the same clothes she was, she’s wearing more than she would be if some Legion boys had caught her. Her pack is gone, though, and all that’s left is the necklace Katie gave her, hanging just beneath the edge of the collar. There’s a fountain in front of her, a gun sitting inside surrounded by a sparse handful of ammo and several golden chips, but nothing else to tell her where she is, until a hologram flickers to life.

      “Are you listening?” the man on the screen asks, and Six isn’t given a chance to respond before he continues on. “Good. From now on, when I talk, listen- and follow my instructions. Play stupid, play clever, make the mistake of telling me no, and that collar around your neck goes off, taking your head with it.

            “And what makes you think I give a shit about that?” Six asks, but she’s not mad, not yet. She’s wary, her eyes darting around the courtyard she’s in, desperate to find out where she is.

            “There’s no escape from here until I let you go. The sooner you accept this, the better,” he tells her, and he must know that all she wants is waiting for her somewhere else.

            “What do you want from me, then? I’m not some fucking miracle worker that can read minds,” she says, pushing herself to her feet. She doesn’t think he’ll let the collar go off for a little back-talk, not when he’s put so much work into getting her here.

            “That structure you see above the fountain is the Sierra Madre Casino. You are going to break inside. A…heist, if you will, one that’s too many years in the making. To do that, and to avoid the traps, you’ll need to gather a team. As I’ve found, one cannot do this alone,” he says. She sighs, crossing her arm over her chest.

            “This place seems pretty fuckin’ deserted to me. Who the hell am I supposed to be working with?” she asks, and she lets her eyes go hard. She’s a little angry, now, mostly at herself for being stupid enough to walk into the trap in the bunker.

            “Around the villa there are three other collars like yours. Collars 8, 14, and 12. You can follow their signals on the Pip-Boy on your wrist. Find all three of them, and bring them back here, to the fountain. You’ll receive your next set of instructions then. There are speakers throughout the villa- if you need me, I’ll guide you as best as I am able. And before you get any ideas about killing each other, here’s a warning. All three collars are linked. If one of you die, you all die. I’ve found that something was needed to make rabble like you cooperate,” he says, and then the hologram flickers off, leaving her with an unnatural quiet.

            She picks up the gun, slinging it across her back, and stuffs the ammo into a pocket. She puts the chips in another pocket in case they come in handy, and then she looks around. The air burns her lungs, the stench of death surrounding her, but she puts one foot in front of the other and makes her way down a rubble-strewn street, towards Collar 12, cursing under her breath the whole time.

 

* * *

 

            It’s one of her off days when Katie wakes up and looks at her phone. It takes her a moment to realize anything, still groggily blinking sleep out of her eyes before she zeroes in on the date. “Holy shit,” she whispers to herself, flying off the couch, the blanket tangled around her legs, just as Boone walks through the door. She jumps hard enough to send her falling flat on her ass, the blanket still tangled around her legs as she stares up at him.

            “Where’s the fire?” he asks, a tired grin on his face as he shuts the door behind him, hanging his rifle in its place by the door. The only light in the room is filtering in through the curtains, shadows falling across his face in stripes.

            “I guess there’s not one. I just…realized something,” she says, a sheepish grin on her face as she starts to untangle her legs. He sits down on the edge of the bed and bends down to untie his boots.

            “Care to share with the rest of us?” he asks, a faint smile still on his face as he pulls one boot off. She leans back against the bed, her shoulder brushing up against his leg.

            “My birthday’s in three days. Does that make me twenty-one, or two hundred and eighty-four?” she asks, but he can feel how tense she is.

            “Is there anything special you want to do? I don’t know the protocols of birthdays in your world, or I’d have a better idea of what to offer,” he says, almost apologetically.

            She almost feels sick to her stomach. It’s a reminder that the time spent here is time spent away from home, and it’s like a knife in her gut when she realizes that she’s not done anything to work towards getting home. She’s started to settle like she belongs in Novac, and she’s finding it harder and harder to convince herself that there’s something worth going back to. She thinks of her last birthday party, with a pink cake and glittering streamers and ginger ale because her parents insisted she have the closest thing to champagne that she could legally have. She tries to picture something like it in Novac, and she can’t get past the absurdity of a pink cake while she sits in an ancient motel room, wallpaper peeling off the walls and the carpet so worn it’s threadbare.

            “I don’t know. It’d feel weird not to celebrate it, but I think it’d be even more weird to celebrate it like we do back home. What do people in the Mojave do on their birthdays?” she asks. She can’t imagine there’s much of a celebration at all- when it seems like the world itself is out to kill you with mutated animals and radiation covering the landscape, even taking a day off to relax can be deadly.

            “Not a lot. Maybe an extra drink, if there’s enough caps. Last year for my birthday, Carla cooked bighorner steaks and we had Manny over. They played nice for a few hours, we drank some wine, and then I worked my shift like usual. It wasn’t very different,” he says, and he’s starting to get that faraway look in his eyes again. She doesn’t think he’s been thinking about Carla as much- he seems happier, lately.

            “Then, maybe, the day before my birthday, you take off work if you can, we get all the booze we could ever drink, and we get completely fucking wasted. Where I’m from, it’s illegal to drink before you’re legally twenty-one, so I’ve never actually drank before. Getting wasted for your twenty-first birthday is practically a tradition in my world,” she says, finally freeing herself from the blanket as Boone tugs his other boot off.

            “Just us?” he asks, almost cautiously. Katie swallows hard and tries not to think of everything that could happen if they got wasted together.

            “Maybe we could invite Manny. I’d invite Cliff, but he’s technically my boss now and that’s a line I’m not willing to cross,” she says, leaning against him.

            “I’ll ask him. If he comes, his bringing his own booze. Anything else you want? I’m not a big fan of chems, but if you want to try any, I think I could get Cliff to give me a discount,” he offers. He tries not to think about the idea of Katie taking chems. He didn’t have anything against chems, not really, but he didn’t think he wanted to see her strung out like the junkies lining the streets of Freeside.

            “I think I’ll pass on that, but speaking of chems, I need to get more Rad-X. I’m almost out. Are you sure I need to take one in the morning and at night? I’m just worried about how expensive it is to keep me supplied,” she says, frowning. He reaches down, ruffling her hair.

            “Better safe than sorry, but if you’re really worried about it you can go ask Dr. Ada. We’re not in danger of going broke anytime soon, and Six always comes back loaded with caps anyway,” he tells her, another smile on his face.

            “All right, if you say so. You got anything planned for today? Manny didn’t tell me to come meet with him or anything,” she asks, resting her head on his knee as she looks up at him.

            “Not today. Figured we could sleep in, if you want,” he says, and her whole face brightens.

            “Napping all day, with you? Hell yeah, sign me up,” she replies, and he grins at her, pushing himself back onto the bed, reaching down to pull her with him. She crawls onto the covers and collapses next to him, wiggling underneath his arm and letting out a satisfied grunt when they’re finally comfortable. He curls around her, nose buried in her hair, and falls asleep in minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, i know that wasn't the longest wait ever between chapters, but seriously, i'm not doing anything else with my life, so i have no idea how time got away from me (actually i do know, i was trying to write for another fic when all i wanted to do was write for this one. luckily for y'all, i just gave the fuck in.) 
> 
> i've already got some plans for the next chapter, including horrible flirt six, drunk katie, and tragic confessions (and maybe the introduction of someone else, who knows?)
> 
> as always, i appreciate any comments letting me know what you thought of this chapter, and i am definitely still taking ideas for scenes to add to bulk this up. i know where i'm at in this and i know where i'm going, but i have no idea how to add all the filler i need for the character development, so i am 100% open to new ideas. see y'all next time!


	15. cliff's edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updated the tags again y'all, hopefully none of the new shit freaks you out or anything. 
> 
> i'm also trying to balance things out between six and katie, so everyone can get a grasp of who six is. hopefully that's not confusing with the third person point of view i write in and the spaces i put between it and everything.

            Six finds that the Sierra Madre houses enough horrors to last a lifetime. She’d screamed, the first time she saw a Ghost shambling towards her. It was enough to make her fling herself backwards out of her crouch, scrabbling away. The inhuman glow of its eyes would be enough to give her nightmares for many nights to come. A spear embeds itself in the cracked wall next to her head, and she almost screams again as she rolls to the side, jumping to her feet. She was low on ammo, but she’d found a rusted tire iron and stuck it through one of the loops in the jumpsuit.  She’d spent ten minutes hitting the damn Ghost once she finally got it down.

            Three more Ghosts later and Six considers herself an expert. She’s gotten better at avoiding them, too, sneaking past most of the time, until she finds herself standing in front of an Auto-Doc, the signal on her Pip-Boy going crazy.

            “Guess I found Collar 12,” she murmurs, typing a couple of commands into the Auto-Doc and stepping back. A second passes before it opens, the door sliding away neatly, and Six’s reflexes are just fast enough to let her catch the girl that falls out, her knees buckling as she tries to keep her from falling. The woman shakes her head as if to clear it and looks up at Six, green eyes meeting brown.

            “Well, I had hoped for a pretty girl,” Six says, a crooked smile on her face. The girl rolls her eyes and takes Six’s hand to steady herself. She glances at the Auto-Doc and back at Six, a question in her eyes.

            “Nope, I wasn’t the one who put you there. Might’ve been the same fucker who brought me here from the Mojave, but that’s just speculation. You all right?” she asks, her eyes tracing the scars lining the girl’s body.

            The girl reaches up to touch her throat, her mouth opening and closing, before she shrugs.

            “Can’t talk?” Six asks. The girl nods, and Six sighs dramatically.

            “Anyway you could tell me your name?” she asks. The girl grins at her, reaching out and taking Six’s hand. She pushes the jumpsuit up her arm, glancing up at her face for any objections. Six is grinning, so she continues, her fingers trailing up her arm before tracing a series of numbers across her skin. _3-8-18-9-19-20-9-14-5_.

            “Wait a second, do those numbers correspond with the letters of the alphabet?” Six asks, her eyes wide as she looks down at her arm and up at the girl. The girl nods, her eyes bright, and Six grins.

            “Christine, huh? Nice to meet you. I’m Six, and I guess we’re in this shithole together,” she says, her smile bright as she clasps Christine’s hand. She nods, a faint smile still on her own face, and Six drops into a crouch, creeping around the corner. 

* * *

           Katie heads up to the mouth of the Dino once she wakes up. She leaves Boone still sleeping on the bed, sprawled out his stomach with his face buried in the pillow. She makes sure to knock before opening the door- she knows by now that scaring a sniper might not be the best choice.

            “If it isn’t my favorite blue-haired girl in the Mojave!” Manny greets, grinning once he sees her.

            “Manny, I’m probably the _only_ blue-haired girl in the Mojave,” she says, rolling her eyes. She goes right to her customary corner and sits cross-legged on the floor, shifting until the wooden planks don’t press so uncomfortably. She’s spent a few shifts in the Dino, some with Manny when she was too bored to do anything else, and most of them with Boone when she can’t sleep.

            “Just means there’s less competition, sweetheart,” he says, sitting in the chair in the opposite corner. He tilts it back, resting his feet in the spaces between the teeth.

            “So, Manny, you like getting drunk with friends, right?” she asks, picking at the hem of her shirt. She thinks it’s actually one of Boone’s; she never paid attention to the ones she bought in Freeside, and Boone had long since dumped all their clothes in one trunk. It’s not like he minds when she wears his things.

            “Yeah, I guess. Where’s this going?” he asks, glancing over at her. He’s got a half-smile on his face, like he knows what she’s going to ask before she does it.

            “Wanna come over and get drunk with me and Boone? He said you’d have to bring booze of your own, but it’d probably end up kind of sad if it was just me and him,” she says, grinning at him. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes, though- she feels almost sick thinking about the plans her roommate had made with her months ago. The plans she’s making now don’t seem too different, except she likes the people she’ll be drinking with this time.

            “I’ll never say no to drinking with you. But something’s eating you. What’s up?” he asks. She hesitates, scooting closer to him and wrapping her arms around her stomach.

            “I…It’s probably dumb,” she says. Her mouth feels dry, suddenly, and she remembers the way she felt when she’d woken up in the Mojave for the first time, her ribs aching from the force of her sobs.

            “It isn’t dumb if it’s bothering you like this,” he says, reaching out and ruffling her hair.

            “I don’t think Boone would want me to tell you, not yet. But…you know what? Fuck it. I think you’re trustworthy,” she says, scooting even closer and resting her chin on his thigh. He runs his fingers through her hair, a faint smile on his face.

            “Does this have anything to do with where you’re from? You know, the place you staunchly refuse to talk about?” he asks. She rolls her eyes, but settles in comfortably, her head still in his lap.

            “Yeah. I don’t even know how to fuckin’ explain this. Maybe I should have waited for Boone. Anyway, you know anything about multi-verse theories?” she asks.

            “Can’t say I’m familiar with it,” he answers.

            “Well, it’s like…for every choice you make, there’s a universe where you made the opposite choice. There’s an infinite amount of these for infinite amounts of choices. And I think…I think I’m from a different one. Boone and Six told me a little about what happened here Pre-War, and it…it sounds nothing like my world. Not mention that the music playing on the radio? It’s, like, ancient back in my world, and before I woke up in the Mojave it was only the year 2017,” she says. She feels like she might throw up, but Manny’s hand doesn’t stop running through her hair.

            “So, you’re from, what? Another world entirely?” he asks. She nods, curling her knees up against her chest. “So, how’d you get here?”

            “I’m not sure. I think it was a Vault experiment or something. I woke up in one, but Six said it was a weird one and didn’t have anything any of the other Vaults did,” she says.

            “You know, I could tell right away you weren’t from here. You’re a little softer around the edges than most people from the Wasteland,” he says, reaching down to squeeze her arm gently, a faint smile on his face. She tilts her had back, looking up at him, a faint smile on her own face.

            “Yeah. I don’t know anything about the Mojave. I don’t know anything about surviving. I have to take two tablets of Rad-X every morning, or I’ll get radiation sickness and even so I may get cancer or something. If I can find my way back home, if I can get the tech working in Vault 115, I’m not going to be the same person that woke up here. I’m different, even though I haven’t been here long. I’ve not been working towards getting back at all, only gotten used to being here, and I don’t even know if I want to go back. I’ve got awful fucking parents and a shitty roommate waiting for me back there and the only thing I miss are the creature comforts I don’t have here. I know if I go back I’ll wake up missing you and Boone and Cliff and probably even Six even though I haven’t seen her in weeks. But this isn’t my home, and I feel like I should be trying to get home just because of that, even if the middle of an irradiated desert is the safest I’ve felt in my entire life,” she says, the words leaving her in a rush. She hadn’t even started picking apart her feelings yet, only knowing that the sudden closeness of something so related to home had her stomach in knots.

            “If you think you can, get that tech up and running anyway. Don’t go unless you’re sure. But it might help, knowing you’ve got the choice,” he says, and she sits there for a moment, her eyes closing as his fingers keep running through her hair.

            “That’s…a good point. But I don’t know my way around tech like that myself, and Boone didn’t know and neither did Six. I’m not sure what to do,” she sighs. She can feel Manny shrug, even though his fingers don’t stop moving.

            “The Brotherhood of Steel are the only ones I know of that know anything about Pre-War technology. They usually go after weapons and the like, so I don’t know how helpful they’d be with a Vault experiment anyway, if you could find them,” he says, an apologetic look on his face.

            “It’s something to keep in mind. I’ll bring it up with Boone, and maybe he’ll have some ideas. If he doesn’t throttle me for telling someone about this, that is,” she says, grinning again. Manny finally lets his hand drop, down to her shoulder where he lets it rest.

            “Need Boone’s permission for everything?” he asks, a teasing glint in his eyes.

            “Well, not everything,” she says, giving him a wicked grin and deliberately running her fingers up his arms. He laughs, ruffling her hair again.

            “Careful now, Katie. All this flirting and I might think you want me to be something aside from your teacher,” he says. She flutters her lashes, her fingers tracing patterns on his skin.

            “Who’s to say I wouldn’t want something else,” she says, innocently. The corners of her mouth twitch as she holds back a smile.

            “I think we both know you want somebody else warming your bed. Someone tall, brooding, and a hell of a lot happier since you showed up,” he tells her, a faint smile on his face.

            “Where are the rules saying I can only want one person warming my bed? I meant it earlier when I said I was fine with sharing,” she says, a hint of seriousness creeping into her voice.

            “Was that a common thing in your world?” he asks, trying desperately not to think of everything that’d entail. He’s not thinking about her writhing beneath him, and he’s definitely not thinking of _Boone_. He’d spent a long time trying not to think of Boone, after he’d met Carla on the Strip.

            “Not really, no. There was a…I guess a growing movement advocating for it? I’ve never seen anything wrong with a polyamorous relationship, not if it’s healthy and not if everyone involved is communicating their wants and needs with each other. It seems…better, in my opinion. You aren’t relying on one person to take care of everything you want and need,” she answers, shrugging.

            “I’ll definitely keep that in mind,” he says, clearing his throat. She grins, stretching, and stands up.

            “You do that. I’ll go…Hell, I don’t know. I’ll do something,” she says, heading down into the dinosaur again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i swear NEXT TIME they're all gonna get trashed together i hope u all enjoyed i hope to have the next chapter out Soon bc i spend half of my waking hours thinking abt this fic


	16. shut up and dance

The old police station was eerily silent, just like the rest of the Sierra Madre. Six glances over her shoulder at Christine, who’s been watching her back the whole damn time. The girl nods, and Six twists the handle of the door. It creaks as it open, and they both freeze, hands slipping down to the weapons they’d managed to find. No ghosts flood the streets, so they slip inside, shutting the door behind them. Six is careful to lock it while Christine darts towards the radios, dismantling them.

            Six stands to survey the room, immediately noticing the super mutant hunched over in the cells, rocking back and forth. “Hey! You there!” she calls out, walking towards the bars, her muscles tensed so she can jump back if he lunges. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence, though, just keeps rocking back and forth. Christine tugs on her sleeve and points at a door. She nods, following her and skirting neatly around the piles of rubble. She switches the light of her Pip-Boy on, shining it ahead of them both. The boots she’s wearing are thin enough that she can feel every piece of rubble she steps on, and she finds herself missing the thick soles of her leather boots.

            They find a set of stairs leading down into the depths. Christine turns to look at her, a question in her eyes. She makes a series of hand gestures, pointing at the Pip-Boy and her own wrist before pointing to herself and the stairs.

            “You want to go?” Six asks, raising an eyebrow. She nods enthusiastically, and Six starts to unbuckle the Pip-Boy.

            “All right. Just be careful and keep an eye out for radios. I’ll wait up here. Make some noise with that tire iron if you need me,” she says, giving her a faint smile. Christine nods, smiling back as she reaches up and pats Six’s cheek. She disappears down the stairs into the darkness, taking the comforting light of the Pip-Boy with her. Six kicks some of the rubble clear and sits down, resting her head back against the wall. Exhaustion is settling in her bones, her legs aching from the constant crouch she keeps outside, her lungs burning from the tainted air. She lets her eyes flutter shut, but she’s careful to keep her ears pricked for the sound of footsteps. For the longest time, all she hears is the mutant rocking back and forth and she wonders if she made a mistake sending Christine in alone. It wouldn’t be the first time.

* * *

            Katie ends up curling up on the couch with a book while Boone sleeps. The curtains block out most of the light, enough that he’s comfortable sprawled across the bed, his cheek pressed into the pillow, but there’s enough getting into the room that she can read without straining her eyes. Occasionally, Boone will snore, and she finds herself smiling every time. She’s near the end of her book when he lets out a groan, rolling over. She slips off the couch and comes to sit next to the bed, her chin propped up on the mattress. He blinks his eyes open lazily, smiling when he sees her waiting there.

            “What time is it?” he asks, his voice rough from sleep. She tries to ignore the way that voice makes her feel, and reaches for her phone.    

            “Just past four-thirty,” she tells him. He stretches, then, his back arching as his shirt rides up. She swallows hard, tearing her eyes away from his muscles. The cocky grin on her face lets her know that he definitely noticed the way she was staring.

            “You talk to Manny?” he asks, melting back into the mattress. She sighs, pushing herself up off of the floor and crawling up to join him, stretching out on her side, her head propped up with her elbow.

            “Yeah. He said he’d join us no problem, but I also told him about…me,” she says, not quite able to meet his eyes.

            “What about you?” Boone asks, but from the tone of his voice she knows he’s caught her meaning. She shrinks back, curling in on herself, bracing herself for yelling.

            “He asked what was wrong, and well, I didn’t know what else to say, so I told him where I’m from, and how I got here. I know I should have gotten your advice first, but I feel like he’s trustworthy. If it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have said anything. But he was your best friend once, wants to be again, and he’s been good about helping me without asking questions,” she says, holding her breath.

            “You can tell whoever you want, Katie. The secret to surviving in the Mojave is trusting your gut, and if your gut tells you trust someone and tell them, you make that choice. If it goes sideways, I’ll always be here to bail you out. You don’t have to ask me for permission to do things,” he says, gently, and she exhales sharply, her eyes flicking back up to his.

            “You…aren’t mad?” she asks, biting her lip. He reaches out, linking his fingers with hers, a faint smile on his face.

            “I’m not mad,” he tells her, and her whole face brightens. She squeezes his hand.

            “Well, that’s a relief. Now that that’s over, I suppose I should probably wrangle up something to eat,” she says, but she doesn’t make a move to get up.

            “Mmm, probably. What were you thinking of making?” he asks. His thumb traces idle circles on the back of her hand, and she pretends that she isn’t hyper-aware of every movement he makes.

            “Not sure. I picked up some Brahmin cheese, so I wanted to use that. If I could find something like garlic and basil, I sweet-talk Cliff into letting me use his oven to make pizza. I miss pizza,” she says, a little wistfully.

            “I think we have some dried basil in one of the cabinets. A traveling caravan had some, told Carla it might help the morning sickness. She used enough to find out it didn’t. Don’t know anything about garlic, though. Think that might have died out after the War,” he says, apologetically. She sighs dramatically, sprawling across the mattress. She’s careful not to unlink their fingers, though, the point of contact suddenly one of the most important things in her life.

            “Not the garlic. It’s the most important herb ever created! How am I supposed to do anything without my garlic? What else am I supposed to dump on anything vaguely resembling pasta?” she moans, and he laughs. He lets go of her hand, and she starts to protest before he puts one arm around her stomach and pulls her closer, his head on her chest as he laughs. She reaches up, running a hand through his hair.

            “I didn’t think I was that funny,” she says, and she hopes he doesn’t hear the way her heart is stuttering in her chest.

            “You have your moments,” he tells her, a grin on his face. She rolls her eyes, nudging him gently.

            “Hey, keep that up, and we’ll see who keeps fixing you awesome Pre-War meals,” she scoffs.

            “We both know you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you left me eating Pork ‘N Beans,” he reminds her. She shakes her head fondly.

            “Maybe I’ll just start fixing shitty Pre-War meals,” she says, and he laughs again before rolling off of her enough to push her gently towards the edge of the bed.

            “Maybe it’s time you teach me a thing or two,” he says. She raises her eyebrow, but she’s grinning as she stands up. She stretches, moving towards the refrigerator.  There’s a huge pot of already cooked rice inside, she just needs to add a little water and heat it up again over the hot plate.

            “Maybe it’s best to start with rice. It’s easy, all you gotta do is boil it, and you can add whatever you want. Maybe some Brahmin meat? We’ve got a little left. We could toss in the vegetables we have, make a shitty stir-fry,” she says, mostly to herself. He gets up, too, stretching lazily as he comes to stand next to her.

            “Whatever you want. You’re the expert here,” he says. She rolls her eyes, but she pulls everything out of the fridge and lines it up on the counter.

            “Chop the meat. I’ll handle the vegetables,” she says, passing him a knife. He nods, getting to work. He’s paid attention to the way she cuts her meat, and he does a passable job at imitating her. Katie fishes her phone out of her pocket, starts the music playing, and gets back to work. They move in companionable silence until the meal is over, Katie occasionally giving him various tips. Boone knows he’s probably never going to end up cooking anything like this, but he’d give the world for the way her face lights up as she talks.

* * *

            Katie finds herself sitting outside, her guitar in her lap as she strums it mindlessly. There’s only about half an hour left to waste before someone heads over to let Manny off early. The sun is inching its way towards the horizon, tendrils red spreading across the sky like blood in the water.

            “I think Manny can find our room without you sitting out here,” Boone says, leaning against the doorway. She jumps; she hadn’t heard him walk up behind her.

            “Never said I was worried about him getting lost,” she said, her fingers tapping on the neck of the guitar as she grins up at him.

            “You worried about this little party of yours? We can always call it off. I’ll be happy with the night off, and I’m sure Manny wouldn’t mind heading back home,” he tells her, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks out at the expanse of desert he can see through the junk fence, trying to pretend he isn’t worried about her.

            “I trust the two of you to at least try to play nice. Although, I am wondering…is the booze Pre-War? I know the easy and convenient food is,” she says, one corner of her mouth turned up into a smirk.

            “I promise I’m not going to poison you with whiskey that’s two centuries old. We’re going to drink moonshine, made in the finest handmade still within miles. It’s also the only still within miles. The rusty barrels give it a little extra kick,” he says, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

            “Holy shit. You mean to tell me it’s two hundred years after the Great War, and y’all are still making moonshine the redneck way?” she asks. Neither of them can quite keep a straight face, even as Manny steps out of the dinosaur, his rifle slung over his back and his hat pulled low across his eyes.

            “Looks like the party got started without me,” he says, a grin on his face. Katie stretches her legs out, shifting the guitar in her lap.

            “Katie here was just laughing at us poor Wastelanders,” Boone tells him, a smile still on his face.

            “Hey, it ain’t my fault you’re all using rudimentary stills to make whiskey,” she says. Manny rolls his eyes at her, slinging his rifle down next to her and settling down on the sidewalk.

            “Out of all the things you could make fun of, you decide on this?” he asks, but he’s smiling too and Katie’s starting to think maybe this won’t be so scary after all.

            “Hey, a girl has to pick her battles,” she says, shrugging. Manny laughs, nice and easy.

            “Should we go on inside, or do you want me to bring the drinks out here?” Boone asks. Katie stretches, careful of her guitar.

            “We can go back in. It’ll start to get dark soon, anyway,” she says. Manny lets out a half-hearted groan but he hauls himself to his feet anyway. Katie does the same, with much less grumbling, as Boone leads the way inside. The light bulb is burning but the curtains are closed, casting a dim light over the whole room. She puts her guitar in the case and sits down in the floor in front of the couch. Manny sits on the couch itself, and Boone digs through the fridge until he comes up with three bottles of whiskey. He makes his way over to them, tossing one bottle to Katie and keeping the other two for himself as he slides down to the floor, his back pressed up against the bed.

            “You know, twenty-one is an achievement in the wasteland,” Manny says. She unscrews the lid, giving it a cautious sniff. It smells like normal whiskey. It looks like normal whiskey. She hopes it’ll taste like normal whiskey, too.

            “Yeah. There’s a lot of people who don’t make it to twenty-one out here,” Boone says, and there’s a haunted look in his eyes. Katie feels caged, for a moment, the sadness and anger of every injustice in the Mojave bleeding into the small hotel room. _Not at my party_ , she thinks, and then she downs a massive gulp of the whiskey.

            It tastes like shit, and she finds herself coughing, leaning forward as Manny reaches down to thump her back. “Take it easy,” he says, but there’s laughter in his voice. She passes the bottle to him, and he takes a gulp himself, albeit one much smaller than Katie had taken.

            “Hey, Boone, my phone’s on the table next to the bed. Toss it to me?” she asks. He reaches up and grabs it, tossing it gently to her.

            “Something from home?” Manny asks. Katie looks up at him with a grin as he leans over and hands the bottle to Boone.

            “Yeah. It’s like…a Pip-Boy on fuckin’ steroids,” she says, and she’s grinning as she thumbs through her collection of music.

            “Looks like you come from somewhere real fun,” Manny says, a little wistfully, and Katie finds herself looking at him and Boone for a minute, really looking. Boone is only twenty-six, and she knows Manny is close in age to him, and she wonders how much blood they have on their hands. The wasteland has done its best to chew them up and spit them out. She remembers Boone jerking awake in the middle of the night, biting back a scream with his eyes wild and scared, and she thinks it’s gotten pretty damn close.

            “Yeah,” she says, absentmindedly accepting the bottle from Boone and taking another drink, “I think you two would like it there. Too bad I can’t just take you back for a visit,” she says, and she passes it to Manny. She’s a little angry, she realizes, because back in her world Boone and Manny would be in their mid-twenties, living a normal fucking life instead of having to claw one out of a desert determined to bleed them dry.

            “Yeah,” Manny says, giving her a crooked grin, “I think I’d like to see it,” he says, handing the bottle back to Boone.

            “Well, at least I’ve got some of the music. And you know what we should totally do?” she says, looking at them both with a gleam in her eyes. _Fuck being sad,_ she thought, _it’s my goddamn birthday and if this is what we’ve got then I’m going to make the most of it_.

            “I’m not sure I like that look,” Boone says, but he’s smiling as she hauls herself to her feet, accepting the bottle he holds out to her.

            “What does it mean?” Manny asks, as she takes a big gulp and sits the bottle down decisively on the table. It’s over halfway gone, and her stomach is nice and warm, and there’s no point in sitting around being miserable.

            “It means we should definitely dance,” she says, and she looks so damn proud of herself for coming up with it.

            “I don’t dance,” Boone tells her, as she starts up the music, sitting her phone down next to the whiskey. Loud music fills the room, chasing out any lingering thoughts she might have had. It’s shitty club music, the stuff she downloaded for when she just needed to make a fool of herself in her bedroom because nothing else would suffice.

            “Come on,” she pleads, giving him the best puppy dog eyes as she tugs on his arm. Manny settles back onto the couch, watching with a big grin stretched across his face. Boone holds out valiantly for a few more seconds before he gives in, letting her pull him up.

            “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, his voice gruff, and she laughs, the sound clear even over the music.

            “That’s the point. You just flail around looking stupid,” she says, and then she turns to Manny, tugging him to his feet as well.

            “Oh no, I never agreed to this!” he protests, but he’s laughing just as much as she is, and then she starts to move to the music, grabbing both of their hands and pulling them along with her. And then Manny’s dancing in earnest, unwilling to let her look like a complete idiot all by herself, and then Boone is, because he’s not going to just stand there while the two of them have fun. All three of them are flailing around in the small space they have, and then Katie is laughing so hard she has to stumble over to the bed, sliding to the floor and holding her stomach because the three of them look so goddamned ridiculous. The two of them slide down next to her, breathing hard, and Katie fumbles for her phone, turning the music off. She lets herself lean against Boone in the sudden quiet, all three of them breathing heavy.

            “Is that something that happens in your world often?” Manny asks, and she laughs again, wincing at the soreness in her stomach. Her cheeks are starting to hurt from the grin on her face, but damned if she can’t make it go away.

            “Sometimes,” she says, shrugging as best she can. Boone has one arm wrapped loosely around her, and her cheek is pressed into his chest. They’re half-laying down, the end table digging uncomfortably into his lower back, but she looks so happy he can’t bring himself to move. He thinks this might be the happiest he’s seen her looking, and God knows he hasn’t smiled so much since before Carla’s death. Manny is grinning on Katie’s other side, too, even as he reaches for the bottle of whiskey again, stretching over them both.

            “Careful,” Boone says, a faint chuckle in his voice as Manny nearly falls on top of them. Katie giggles, actually giggles, and it’s the cutest sound either of them have ever heard.

            “We should have done that sooner,” she says, as Manny finally grasps the bottle, flopping down next to Boone, their shoulders brushing.

            “Hell yeah we should have, princess. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Manny answers, taking a big drink from the bottle. Katie reaches for it, and he passes it over. She doesn’t make the effort to lift her head, and some of the whiskey trickles from the corner of her mouth and onto Boone’s shirt. He doesn’t say anything though, just sits there and looks at her, still grinning.

            “I haven’t _heard_ anything like that, either, and I thought I’d heard all your weird music,” he tells her. Her grin grows wider for a moment.

            “Oh, honey, I’ve still got a ton of music to show you,” she says, and she holds the bottle up to his lips, her brow furrowed in determination. He lets her tip the whiskey into his mouth, and he’s a little proud when she doesn’t drench them both with it before passing the bottle back to Manny.

            “Bet you’ve got a lot of stuff to show us,” Manny says, and Katie nods as she curls up even closer to Boone. Outside, the sun has started to slip below the horizon, and the world gets darker and darker. Inside, though, Katie doesn’t think she’s ever felt so welcome anywhere in her life.

            She isn’t sure what home feels like, but she has an inkling that this might be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey hey it's ya boi back again with another chapter 
> 
> enjoy the fun image of these dumbasses dancing because the next chapter is going to have ANGST and then maybe some more fun stuff who knows not me it depends on whether the next couple of scenes can stand on their own or if they need more ANYWAY feel free to let me know what you thought in the comments! i'm always up to chat about this fic and i usually respond to every comment i get. see ya next time my pals!!


	17. if home is where the heart is...

They’d been drinking for hours. Katie was pretty sure she already regretted the hangover she was going to have, but they’d laughed themselves stupid and curled up in the floor, Manny at one end of the bed and Boone and Katie at the other end. She was half-laying between his legs, a bottle of whiskey clutched in one hand, and Manny and Boone had been talking for the better part of an hour now. The lull of their voices was gentle enough that Katie was almost asleep, her grip loose on the bottle. She was lucky it was almost empty, but she can’t quite bring herself to care either away as she hovers on the cusp of sleep. She’d long since stopped trying to make out the words of the conversation, instead just basking in the warmth of this feeling.

                She’s shaken out of her stupor at the sound of a raised voice, words sharp with anger.

                “That’s not what this is about!” Manny yells, gesturing with his whiskey bottle. Katie keeps her eyes shut tight, hoping that the way she tenses up doesn’t give her away.

                “Then what the hell is it about, Manny?” Boone asks, his voice low and dangerous, and she doesn’t think she’s ever heard him sound so angry. She suddenly wishes she hadn’t curled up on him, wishes that she’d taken the couch with Rex.

                “I just want to know what the hell happened to my best friend,” Manny says, and he sounds like the breath has been punched out of him.

                “My wife died, Manny, that’s what happened to me. I stopped fucking talking to you because you seemed happy about it,” he snarls, and Katie definitely wishes she was over on the couch with the dog.

                “I’m not talking about that,” Manny spits back, and he slams his bottle of whiskey down on the floor. “I’m talking about Bitter Springs. You’ve been different ever since you came back. And I know it wasn’t just you. Nobody who went came back the same, and people started looking at the NCR different, too. The brass at McCarran wouldn’t tell us a goddamn thing, and you won’t tell me anything either. I wanted you to come to Novac because I thought it might help you deal with whatever ghosts you have chasing you.” There’s something small and sad in his voice, too.

                Boone goes still. A long minute passes before he starts to speak, sounding so goddamned old that it breaks her heart. He’d sounded like this when he’d told her about Carla, too, and she wonders how many skeletons he has in his closet.

                “It wasn’t anything good,” he says, reaching down and brushing the hair out of Katie’s face.

                 “Tell me,” Manny pleads, the desperation plain on his face.

                “The reports say that it was a miscommunication,” Boone starts, and then he takes a deep breath. His fingers keep moving in Katie’s hair, and it takes everything in her not to let them know she’s awake. “We were set up on this ridge, across from the settlement, when our troops went in. And I don’t know what happened, don’t know what the situation was in that camp, but all of a sudden there were women and children running away, pulling wounded and sick with them. We radioed in, asked what to do, because these weren’t the raiders we’d been expecting. They told us to shoot. So we did, until we ran out of ammo.” His voice sounds clinical and detached, like he was reading a report.

                 “You blame yourself, don’t you?” he asks, because if anyone ever really knew what went on in Boone’s head, it’d be Manny Vargas.

                “Good men don’t follow bad orders,” he answers, and he’d never sounded so tired before. Katie blinks her eyes open, curling around her arm, desperate to offer any comfort that she could. He looks down, almost like he isn’t surprised that she’s awake, but he doesn’t say anything, only starts rubbing his hand up and down her arm instead of playing with her hair.  

                “You aren’t a bad man. You were a soldier,” Manny murmurs, clumsily reaching out and curling his hand around Boone’s ankle.

                “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean those kids aren’t dead,” he answers, and Katie can’t imagine how hard it would be to look down the barrel of a gun at a kid. She puts the whiskey on the floor, curling closer.  

                “Did Carla ever know?” Manny asks, after another silence, and she’s never seen Boone look so miserable.

                “No. I was going to tell her. Never found the right time, though,” he answers, and his hand stops.

                “You really loved her, didn’t you,” he says, a sad smile on his face. Katie thinks she understands, then, with the way Manny looks at Boone.

                “She made it easy to forget. Talked enough that the silence wasn’t heavy, either,” he says, glancing down at Katie. She gives him a weak smile, squeezing his wrist gently. “But it’s late, and Katie was drifting off on us. Maybe we should call it a night.”

                Manny stands, stretching. “Guess I should head on home,” he says, but he doesn’t look like he wants to, and Katie knows it won’t be the same if he does.

                “You can stay,” she says, glancing at Boone. He doesn’t seem to mind too much, based on the smile he gives her, so she pulls herself up with the edge of the bed. She kicks the empty whiskey bottles out of her way and heads over to the dresser, grabbing an old and ratty t-shirt. She’s fairly certain this one belongs to Boone, with how big it is. She reaches down and scratches Rex behind the ear as she passes, getting a tail wag in return.

                She takes her time in the bathroom, brushing her hair out and making herself feel a little less sloppy-drunk. She leaves her clothes in a pile next to the bathroom, the shirt hanging down to her mid-thighs. Boone and Manny have done a decent job at straightening up enough to make their lives a little easier in the morning, when they’re hung-over and regretting the empty bottles they’ll be throwing away. She throws herself onto the bed, ignoring the way the shirt rides up as she claims the pillow. Boone tosses a pair of sweatpants at Manny and grabs another pair. Manny disappears into the bathroom, and Boone just moves out of her line of sight before she hears the tell-tale rustle of clothing.

                She thinks, again, of home. It’s been a few months, now. She wonders if anyone has even missed her. Her teachers, obviously, would have shown some concern when she stopped showing up to class. She’d always been good about going, only missed when she really needed to. Her roommate had probably noticed, might’ve even filed a missing person’s report. Her parents had probably cleaned her dorm room by now, taking all her stuff back home.

                Boone crawls into bed behind her, curling around her automatically as he pulls the blankets over them. She rolls over, her hand fisting in his t-shirt. She breathes in his smell, and the thought of going home makes her want to cry. She doesn’t want to give everything up, can’t go a day without missing something, but she already knows how empty she’ll feel if she goes back.

                Manny steps out of the bathroom, flicking the lights off. A minute later, he crawls into the bed, too, leaving a little space between them. She reaches out in the dark, her hand curling around his wrist. He mumbles, shifting closer. The two of them pressed up against her are enough to chase away any lingering thoughts, and when she falls asleep she dreams of the warm desert sun and the endless horizon stretched out in front of her, without a second thought of Tennessee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took entirely too long to write and i apologize for that. i've got a lot planned for the next chapter, and it's gonna get a little bit darker (it's six six is so fucked up god i love her) so keep that in mind. i'll tag appropriately, so just be sure to check those out next time. 
> 
> as always, i'd love to know what y'all think! i try to respond to every comment i get. bonus points if you can guess what the next chapter's title will be (it'll be a continuation of the lyric used for this one lmao i'm not trying to get you to pull it out of your ass)


	18. ...then we're all just fucked

Dawn breaks over the Fort, greeted by the sleepy sounds of the start of the day. In most places, the day didn’t start until dawn broke, but at the Fort, most of the slaves were up well before dawn, when the sky was just starting to turn light. It took a lot of work to keep Caesar and his men fed, took a lot of work to keep them happy. A woman, sitting at the edge of the camp shucking corn, stops and looks out over the horizon. In a few hours, it’ll be miserably hot, but right now it feels almost nice. She could have enjoyed it, if it weren’t for the collar around her neck.

                A man in Legion armor approaches her. She doesn’t look up at him, knows exactly who he is, but there’s a faint smile on her face as her hands slow down. She doesn’t stop, though, never lets herself stop, learned the hard way that the legionnaires didn’t like that.

                “Ain’t supposed to be here,” she says, voice soft, and she finally lets herself look up at him, her face softening.

                “Never let that stop me before,” he says, and he glances around to make sure they’re alone before he lets his hand rest on her shoulder.

                “Always were stubborn,” she tells him, turning her attention back to the corn. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend that she’s in another place and another time. But she ain’t ever been good at pretending.

                “You getting enough to eat? You’re looking awful skinny,” he says. He can feel the time they have running out, feels like he’s trying to hold sand between his fingers. They don’t have enough of it. They never do. Stolen moments, in the dead of night or in the break of dawn, are all they ever get.

                “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. You’re the one getting sent off to fight,” she says, pausing for a moment so she can reach up and put her hand over top of his.

                “Just…be safe,” he tells her, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of her head, where auburn hair is turning grey. He forgets sometimes just how old she is. How old they both are.

                “I’ll be fine. You watch out for yourself,” she says, letting her eyes close. If she were anyone else, she might have used the collar around her neck to kill herself. But she’s always been the type of woman to _endure_. Sometimes, she hates herself for it.

                “You, too,” he says, and he leans down to press a kiss against her lips. He’s gone just as quick as he’d come, and the woman turns back to the corn. There’s still plenty to do before the day gets hot.

* * *

Katie wakes to a pounding on the door that she can barely hear over the pounding in her head. Rex is standing in front of the door, barking louder than she’s ever heard him bark, and he keeps barking even when she throws her pillow at him. Boone stirs next to her, groaning, but Manny’s still sleeping like the dead, damn him. Katie wiggles her way out of the bed and marches over to the door.

                “Cliff, I swear to fucking God, the sun is barely up, what the fuck do you-” she starts, yanking the door open, only to stop short when she comes face to face with a woman instead of her boss. The damn dog is still barking, too.

                “Nice try, but that’s not my name,” the woman says, a half-grin on her face as she looks her up and down. Katie glances down at the old shirt she’s wearing, tries not to feel exposed.

                “Who is it?” Boone asks, from the bed, sleep making his voice husky.

                “I’m trying to find out. Hold on a moment, ma’am,” she says, giving the woman a tight smile before leaning down to the dog, who has stopped barking and started growling.

                “Rex, for the love of everything good and holy, shut the fuck up. I will cook some brahmin for you specifically if you do but God above I am begging,” she says, because the headache isn’t any better and her mouth feels like it’s full of cotton and she wants nothing more than to crawl back into the bed and sleep for another twelve hours.

                Rex, to his credit, only barks once more before he stops, but he does move to stand next to Katie when she returns to the woman at the door.

                “Hi. Sorry about the introduction. Can I help you?” she says, fixing a smile on her face. She felt like shit, but if she’d learned anything back home it was how to fake politeness. Tennessee was good for something, at least.

                “My name is Veronica Santangelo. Six sent me, said there might be a couple of folks here already,” she says, a wry grin on her face.

                “Okay, cool, I am not the person who should be handling this. I will be right back,” Katie says, turning back into the room. Boone is sitting up by now, looking just as disgruntled as she feels. She scrubs her hands over her face as she steps back into the welcoming darkness of the room.

                “Did I hear that right? Six sent her?” Boone asks, swinging his legs over the bed. Manny still hasn’t woken up, and Katie would think he’s dead if it weren’t for the fact that he was snoring.

                “That’s what she said. I’m gonna let you handle this, though,” she says, and flops face-first on the bed. Boone glances at her fondly before he heads over to the door, where Veronica waits with a look of amusement on her face.

                “So, Six sent you, huh?” he says, and he doesn’t want to admit it, but he misses her. There was something refreshing about her brash nature, and damn her if she hadn’t wriggled her way into his heart after all. She was good at that, though, managed to get most people to like her.

                “Yep. She met me at the 188, told me she was off to investigate some radio signal she found, but told me if I wanted to travel with her she had some friends back in Novac. Gave me the room number and everything,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. Boone sighs, wishes the woman had arrived last night or at least after noon.

                “Fine. But you’re staying in her room. There’s already two people living in mine. We’ll have to go get the key from Cliff,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. Even when she isn’t here, Six manages to give him headaches. Damn if he doesn’t wish she was here, though.

                “Fine by me,” Veronica says, with a tight smile. She hadn’t been comfortable with the idea of staying with strangers, anyway.

                “I’m Boone, by the way, and that was Katie you met earlier,” he says, turning back inside to pull his boots on. He wants to grab a gun, too, but he thinks that might not make the best impression. Veronica hovers near the doorway.

                “Well, it’s nice to meet you,” she says, with another smile. He grunts in response, lacing his boots up. He’s quick about it, could lace them up in his sleep if he had to. God knows there were plenty of times he’d done it when he could barely keep his eyes open.

                “So, how was Six doing when you saw her?” he asks, taking half a second to straighten his shirt before heading outside. Veronica follows, and Rex trots after the both.

                “She seemed fine. A little distracted, but I think that was just because she had something to do. I’m sure she’s all right,” she says. Boone glances over his shoulder with a wry smile.

                “She has a talent for getting herself in trouble,” he tells her, and Veronica can’t help but laugh.

* * *

 

Veronica settles into Six's motel room easily enough. It's empty, dust coating the surfaces. She'll have to wash the sheets on the bed if she doesn't want a face full of dust when she tries to sleep, but it isn't so bad. A hell of a lot cleaner than most places she's been, that's for sure. At least the pipes worked in this room. 

She does look around, tries to see Six in the stuff in the room. There's a toy rocket ship on a shelf by the door, a worn Bible on the night stand. The wardrobe is full of armor, none of it anything like the leather she'd been wearing when she'd met Veronica. There's a handful of worn t-shirts and jeans, a couple of pairs of sweatpants, too. In the very back of the wardrobe, Veronica finds a dress. It is a plain dress, nothing like the fancy ones that she wants. It is blue, tiny flowers printed all over it, and it looks almost new. The fabric is faded, but it isn't worn. She tries to picture Six in a dress, but she can't. The woman she'd met didn't look like one for dresses, looked like she'd be uncomfortable in her own skin if she had to wear one. Maybe it wasn't hers. Maybe she had a girlfriend she was keeping it for, or something. 

She puts it out of her mind and pokes around in a trunk full of weapons before she strips the sheets off the bed. Boone and Katie hadn't seemed very chatty, and the room stank like a distillery, so Veronica figured she was on her own until tomorrow. Not that she minded. She'd gotten used to being alone. 

* * *

              Six doesn’t like Dean Domino. She wants to. She’d seen the old posters in the Mojave, had a crush on him before she realized she was gay. There was still some childhood nostalgia there, but God if he didn’t know exactly how to get under her skin and push every single button she had. She'd be glad to drop him off at his post and get out of there.

                Christine thinks it’s funny, and that’d piss Six off if she weren’t so cute when she failed to hide her amusement. She can tell the other girl doesn’t like Domino either, though, and she takes solace in that. 

                She likes God a lot more. She doesn’t let Dog out, feels too weird messing with his head to do anything like that. She’s also scared about the Gala event they’re about to kick off. She knows it’s going to light up the whole town, knows how much attention that’ll draw from the Ghosts. Her knees are starting to hurt, too, from crawling around to keep from drawing their attention. She’d found another tire iron, though, so her and Christine were both armed. She’d found a pistol, too, but she was saving that for when she really needed it. And she had a set of armor sitting in the bottom of her pack, found in the hospital where she’d found Christine. Their chances aren’t the worst, but Six just wants to go home, doesn't want to do any of this shit anyway. She'd come here for a fresh start, and she'd gotten a collar around her neck that makes it hard to breathe if she thinks about it. She'd expected collars from the Legion. Hadn't expected them from the Brotherhood, or an ex-Brotherhood, or whatever the hell Elijah was. She was looking forward to braining him with the tire iron. 

                She doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, she rolls her shoulders, sets out from the corner she’s planted God in and heads towards Domino’s post, him and Christine in tow. She doesn’t know how, yet, but Six is sure he’s going to be a pain in her ass.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i'm gonna be the first to admit that i know i had Ideas from the last chapter but i don't remember what they were, so have this. i got the katie/boone/etc. stuff down from memory, but god i have no idea what i'd planned for six. i'm just honestly trying to rush six through dead money. 
> 
> also, the woman at the fort? she's gonna be important. i'm gonna try not to give spoilers as to who she is and what her role will be, but y'all can feel free to guess. as always, comments are more than welcome, and i try to respond to every comment i get. i hope y'all enjoyed, and i'll see you next time!!


	19. the age of princesses and pirate ships

                The Gala event kicks off with lights over the casino. Six watches, fixated, but then Ghosts crawl out of the woodwork into the courtyard below. There’s more than she’s ever seen at one time, and with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach she knows she won’t be able to kill them all. Maybe she could if she had a gun, if she didn’t have to stop and cut them up to make sure they didn’t get back up again, maybe. She’s sick of maybes and she’s sick of the Sierra Madre. She’s sick of all of it. But she’s never been a quitter, so she takes a moment while she is safe in the tower to drain one of the precious few bottles of water she has and brace herself for what she’s about to do. She stashes everything she has the pack she found, slings it over her shoulders. She takes one last, long moment for herself, reaching up and wrapping her fist around the necklace Katie had given her before squaring her shoulders and moving out.

                She runs. She runs like she has only ever run once before, muscles burning, lungs screaming. The toxic air only makes it harder, but she doesn’t let it stop her. She’s never let anything stop her before. She stumbles through corners, skidding on the cobblestones, some of them damp and slick. She’s never been so relieved as she is when she sees the fountain, but she doesn’t stop. She can hear Ghosts nearby, in the twisting alleyways, like all of them are making a beeline straight for her. She keeps running, pushes herself farther than she thought she could go. She slams against the gate, the one that leads to the casino, because for all she’s done she’s still got a collar around her neck that’s keeping her from going home. She skids to a stop and makes sure the gate is shut behind her, the latch firmly clasped shut, wasting precious seconds to make sure more Ghosts can’t get into the casino.

                It’s harder to start running again, but she does it anyway. For a long moment she thinks about stopping, thinks about going back to the other gate, the one that’d take her home, and walking until the collar around her neck went off. It’d be easier than all of this, and for all that she’s done it before she can’t keep cheating death. But then she thinks of Christine, with that sly smile on her face, thinks about how killing herself would kill her, too. She hates the Elijah took this from her, just like he took everything else. The one act of defiance she could manage, and she couldn’t do it without having someone else’s blood on her hands.

                So she runs, until the doors of the casino shut behind her, and then she slumps to the floor, her chest heaving. She reaches a hand up, touches the collar that feels like it’s getting tighter and tighter. Her vision blurs, gets darker, until she’s slumped over, her breathing evening out as she sleeps.

* * *

                 _She is a child again, six years old and all scuffed elbows and bruised knees. Her hair is red, like her mother’s, but her eyes are dark like her father’s. Her gapped teeth are her own. She chases after her brothers through the desert, all of them laughing. She’s the youngest, the smallest, but she’s the bravest. Her father calls her a scrapper, and her mother affectionately calls her a menace. They do not know what she will grow up to be._

_She plays cops and robbers with her brothers. She is the cop and they are the robbers, armed with sticks for guns. It is a game that has survived the end of the world, against all odds. She is wearing a dress her mother made for her and boots her father bought her. She wears her hair in long pigtails, and her laughter rings across the open desert as she pretends to shoot at her brothers._

_Ten years later, she will cut them down from crosses, and put bullets in their head. A mercy killing is a killing, all the same, and the blood on her hands will threaten to drown her for the rest of her life._

* * *

                Katie falls back asleep minutes after Boone leaves the apartment. She rolls over as the room starts to heat up, stealing most of the blankets to use as a pillow. Manny snores gently, and it’s different than what she’s used to, but it’s not bad. She doesn’t mind it. She falls asleep before she has time to miss Boone.

* * *

                 _She is home, but it is different. She doesn’t know how much time has passed, but the university she once attended has been reclaimed by nature. There are vines growing on the walls, and the windows have been broken or boarded up. There are cracks in the pathways she once took to get to class. She is wearing armor made from patches of leather, and there is a gun on her back and a red beret on her head. She can barely remember which building is which, but she picks her way through the tall grass to what had once been her dorm._

_The door is unlocked, and she steps inside. It is hot and humid, the air conditioner long since broken. The hallway is full of broken glass from shattered windows, and it crunches under her boots as she drifts to her apartment. This door is locked, like she’d left it, but she has her key in her pocket and it still works. She pushes open the door and steps inside._

_The big window from the living room is unbroken, and it looks out upon the woods behind the building. The apartment looks almost untouched, exactly like it had been when she had left, the lights turned off. Dust floats through the sunlight streaming into the room, and she feels like she is home. Everything is untouched, and everything is right. She forgets the ruin and destruction outside, and she walks to her bedroom._

_There is a skeleton on her bed and a blanket of dust coating the room. There is a red beret on the pillow, a gun in the floor, and tattered scraps of a ratty old t-shirt that was too big even when she had been alive. The air is quiet and still, and she knows in her bones that the room has not been disturbed since she had died. She drifts over, and her fingers brush against the skeleton’s arm._

_There is no flash of fire. There is only a sickness, gradual and slow, that kills (killed?) her. Her world had not ended (will not end?) in a blaze of glory. It ended (will end?) quietly, because she had not known anything was wrong until the radiation had made her hair fall out, and then it was too late. It was a small town, made up almost entirely of the university. Of course it would not have been a target for the bombs. A quiet end, wasting away, is all that she would (did?) get._

_She jerks her hand back with a gasp, stumbling backwards into the dresser. It crumbles beneath her, turns to ash and dust. The skeleton on the bed sits up, eye sockets gaping, face twisted into a grotesque grin._

_“You can never come home,” a voice says, and she knows it is hers even if her mouth does not move. She screams._

* * *

                Katie wakes with a gasp, twisting in the sheets to look around the room. She is relieved to find that she is in Boone’s room, for once. She’d woken up confused, before, always felt something like regret burning in the back of her throat when she realized she wasn’t home. She doesn’t feel that now, only relief that washes over her. Manny is gone, and the bed is empty. She can hear noises from the bathroom, doesn’t know if it’s Manny or Boone, but being alone right now makes her skin crawl, so she slides out of the bed and pads across the threadbare carpet.

                It’s Boone, standing in front of the mirror. He’s shaving, his face lathered, razor in hand. He sees her standing behind him in the mirror, smiles even though he doesn’t turn to look at her.

                “Do you know anything about what happened to other areas? Say, if I wanted to find my hometown, but here, in this time, do you know what it’d look like?” she asks, blurts it out before she can think. She shifts her weight from foot to foot uneasily, arms crossed over her chest. Boone stills, the razor against his face, one swath cut through the lathered shaving cream.

                “I’d say it’d be like a lot of places here. Somehow we didn’t get hit so bad. Tennessee wouldn’t have been a major target,” he says, cautiously. She thinks uneasily back to her dream, thinks about how it was only a ghost town. Anything could have happened, didn’t have to be the end of the world that had done it, but it had been. She doesn’t know if she wants to go home, doesn’t know if she wants to stay here.

                “Oh,” she says, and her stomach lurches when she tries to think of the impossibility of it all. How much of the dream would be replicated, if she made the long trek? Had her university ever existed in this world? She feels as though she has been knocked off balance, like a rug has been yanked out from underneath her feet. She knew this was not her world, but sometimes it creeps back up on her, makes her feel like she’s going to suffocate.

 She pushes past him to the toilet, barely sweeping her hair to the side before she is voiding her stomach. Nothing but bile comes up, but she can’t make it _stop_ , and then Boone is there, kneeling next to her, taking her hair in his hand and rubbing soothing circles on her back. Eventually, her stomach settles, and she slumps down, leaning against him.  

                “I knew I shouldn’t have let you drink so much,” he says, but there’s a faint smile on his face. He’s been there plenty of times himself, only he never had anyone to hold his hair and rub his back and tell him it was okay.

                “I knew good and damn well what I was getting myself into,” she sighs, and then she pushes herself back on her heels and stands up. She hadn’t noticed her headache until now, but it was back with a vengeance.

                “That’s what they all say,” he says, deadpan, before a grin breaks out across his face. She shakes her head fondly at him.

                “Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna go lay down, let you finish shaving,” she says, and trundles back to the bed. She doesn’t lay down, though, can’t bring herself to do it. She keeps seeing the skeleton- her skeleton- on the bed. She knows it was just a dream, but it lingers like an old ghost she can’t shake.

* * *

                In the middle of the desert, there is a house. It has been gutted, and only the shell remains behind. The doors hang off their hinges, and the windows have been broken, and parts of the house have been burned. There are two crosses out back, where the garden used to be, and there are two graves out front near the broken old porch. Most of the furniture has been broken, damaged, destroyed, or stolen, but there is some that remains.

                If you go inside the old house, and brave the rickety, charred steps, you will find a bedroom. It is in better condition than most of the rest of the house, because it had contained little of value. The blankets are still on the bed, touched by mildew by now. The dresser has been destroyed, the trunk at the end of the bed has been upended, but there were only clothes and keepsakes inside, nothing of value. The bedroom will tell you about a girl who had lived there once, with bruised knees and scraped knuckles, who hung posters on her walls. If you look closely, you might find a diary under the mattress.

                The house, like most places abandoned in the desert, holds a story that can be pieced together. On the barbed wire fence outside, there is a swatch of crimson fabric, bleached by the sun. In the living room, there is a picture that has been knocked off the mantle. The glass is shattered and the picture itself is faded, but it’s easy to make out five smiling faces. The eldest child sits between two parents, and the girl sits on her mother’s lap while her brother stands in front of her father. It is a moment captured in time. It is a moment that has been lost to time.

                There is no trace left of the girl in the picture. The Mojave had gnawed her down to her bones, and the woman that grew in her place bears no resemblance to the girl whose life had been taken from her. She doesn’t think there is anyone left who remembers her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i could not resist writing this and updating again so soon. i hope you like six, and i hope you like the backstory i'm piecing together for you.


	20. tell the world i'm coming home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updated the tags, check them out!

Father Elijah tells her to kill them, to hunt them down like dogs.

                Six doesn’t listen. Of course she doesn’t. She’s hated Father Elijah since she woke up with the collar around her neck, but none of the others deserved this either. Instead, she creeps through the casino, finds them one by one, and she does what she can to save them. There is a plan forming in the back of her mind, one that leaves her chewing on her bottom lip until it bleeds. She realizes, as she stops to catch her breath and give her knees some rest, that she would rather die herself than see Elijah walk free. She will see him die if it kills her, and she knows that it might, because of the collar around her neck, but she decides that she doesn’t care. It’ll be a pity to leave everyone behind, but she’s got a few tricks up her sleeve.

It’s easy to talk Domino down, when she reminds him how she never worked against him, how she’d rather work for him than Elijah, how it’s the crazy bastard who put the collars around their necks that he should save his anger for. God is…well, a different situation for Six entirely. She’d never done anything like that, but she kept her voice soft as she talked him down, told him to step into the water and become whole, because nobody should have control over him, not her or anyone. He doesn’t remember her, after, but he doesn’t want to kill her, and she presses the precious few stimpacks she has into his hand as she slips away.

                Christine is happy to see her, tells her so with the new voice she has. Six laughs, pulls her into a hug, tells her that it’s good to see her again.

                “It’s only been a few hours!” Christine protests, but she’s smiling, and Six winks at her.

                “Oh, but being deprived of your company made it feel so much longer,” she says, and Christine rolls her eyes and smacks her arm. It’s easier to communicate, now, and both of them are relieved.

                “You ready to do this?” she asks. Six shrugs, instead, glances around the room.

                “Just a second. I have a friend, who mentioned wanting a dress. Help me rob the dead?” she asks, eyes wide with mock innocence, and Christine laughs.

                “Yeah, yeah. I’ve got your back,” she says, leading the way to the skeleton in the corner. While her back is turned, Six pockets the med-x from the bedside table.

* * *

 

                Katie had never expected to be glad to get back to work, but she was. Cliff had started letting her man the cash register, instead, some days. She wasn’t sure what he was doing on his new days off, and wasn’t sure if asking would be more than polite chatter, but manning the cash register kept her out of her head, even if it was pretty mindless. She never saw much of anybody- the store was dead, just like the sleepy little town outside, but it was enough, and that’s all she asked for. Occasionally, Veronica would come in, just to pass the time.

                “Not much to do in this little town, huh?” she’d asked, and Katie had grinned at her.

                “Not really, no. Bet you’re bored out of your skull up in Six’s room by yourself,” she’d said, wiping at a stubborn spot of dirt on the counter with a rag equally as a dirty.

                “There’s some books in there I’ve been reading, but it is pretty dull,” she’d answered, leaning against the counter. They’d talked for a good hour, and Katie had told her she was welcome at theirs anytime. She figured Boone wouldn’t begrudge her this. She didn’t want to think about how another friend is another leash into a time that isn’t hers.

                As much as she was settling into Novac, though, she kept finding herself looking off towards the horizon. Sometimes she’d space out when she was in the dino’s mouth with Boone or Manny, her rifle on the stand, one of them spotting for her. Other times, she’d be walking home after work, and she’d stop and stare into the distance. She knows Vegas lays somewhere over the horizon. When she’s out at night, she fancies she can see the glittering lights on the distance. Sometimes she thinks she really can.

                She wonders when Six will come home.

* * *

                In the end, Six shuts Elijah in the vault.  There is cold, hard anger in her eyes as the door shuts. She waits until she can hear his fists pounding on the doors, can hear his muffled screaming, before she starts sprinting. She hopes he wastes his air screaming. She hopes he dies angry.

                Christine is waiting for her when she steps out of the elevator, and Six doesn’t get a chance to catch her breath before she’s being pulled into a bone-crushing hug. She lets out a wheeze of a laugh, makes a joke about broken ribs that the other girl smacks her for before pulling her in for a kiss that leaves them both breathless. Afterwards, Six is quick to pick the locks on their collars. She throws them down the elevator shaft.

                Eventually, they make it to the bed. Christine sits down on the edge, and Six lays down, her head in her lap. Christine runs her fingers through Six’s hair, gently brushing out the tangles. Part of it is still held in a tangled mess with a hair tie, but most of it has come undone after the Sierra Madre put her through the wringer.  

                “Are you okay?” Christine asks, concern glimmering in her eyes. Six lets her own eyes slide shut, the dirty and cracked ceiling fading to black.

                “Just…got a headache. From the bullets. From Benny,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. Christine’s fingers are soothing in her hair, the motion repetitive, and Six can feel the pull of sleep. She can’t remember how long it’s been since she was asleep, doesn’t know how long she’s been in the Madre.

                “I suppose you’re going back to the Mojave after this,” she says, after the silence stretches between them. Six hums in affirmation.

                “Got some unfinished business, there,” she says. If she tries, she can almost pretend the air doesn’t smell like ozone and metal, like blood, like the gold sitting heavy in her pack, like she’s sitting back in Novac in her own bed.

                “Oh,” Christine says, and her fingers go still. Six fumbles, reaching for Christine’s free hand, until she can link their fingers together.

                “Come with me. Don’t wanna leave you here. Don’t wanna do it without you,” she says, and she blinks her eyes open just in time to see Christine’s soft smile. She leans up, pulling Christine down, and then they are kissing again, slow and soft. Christine’s hand glides down Six’s side, and Six fumbles for the leverage she needs to flip them over. Finally, Christine is on her back, underneath her, her fingers creeping up her shirt. Six presses kisses along her jaw, fingers teasing along the hem of her shirt. She can’t remember how long it’s been since she’s slept with someone, doesn’t want to think about how horribly out of practice she might be. Instead, she focuses on the breathy sighs coming from her partner, on the nails skimming down her spine, on the way Christine curls a hand into the dusty blankets with a moan when she nips at her neck.

                She lets Christine set the paces, their kisses gradually increasing in intensity until they’re both breathing hard, and Six feels a certain dampness between her thighs. She pulls back, grinning down at the rumpled girl beneath her.

                “You wanna keep going, or kick this up to the next level?” she asks, her fingers hovering above the hem of her own shirt. Christine snorts, sitting up and pulling her into a quick kiss before pulling her shirt off her head. Six laughs, reaching up to undo her hair. It cascades down her shoulders and she lets her hands trail down her chest, down the flat plane of her stomach, to the waistband of her pants.

                “Six, stop trying to be sexy. There’s nothing sexy about where we are. This is stress relief. So relieve my stress, or let me relieve yours, or just get on with it,” Christine says, lips twisted into a frown. Six huffs a laugh, leaning down to kiss her again as she undoes her belt. There’s a little awkward shuffling involved to divest them from the rest of their clothes, but eventually they’re naked, Christine on her back again, Six straddling her waist.

                Christine is the one who reaches up, pulling Six back down. Their lips crash together awkwardly, making them both giggle, but then they’re kissing like they were before, Six’s hand trailing down her side to rest on Christine’s hip. Six isn’t sure how long they stay like that, but Christine is soft and warm beneath her, and she’s not in any hurry to go outside again. She could stay here for hours, kissing along her jaw, down her neck. Eventually, though, Christine must get impatient, because she flips them over.

                “Somebody’s taking charge,” Six teases, and Christine rolls her eyes.

                “Shut up,” she says, thumb ghosting over Six’s nipple.

                “Come sit on my face and make me,” she answers, grinning. Christine rolls her eyes again but shuffles upwards, until her knees are on either side of Six’s head. The girl beneath her reaches up, puts her hands on her hips to keep her steady, and guides her downwards. It’s been a long time since she’s done this, and Christine is a new partner, so it takes her a minute to get it right. But Christine is wonderfully expressive, gasping and moaning in ways that make Six _wet_ whenever she licks a certain way.  She teases out the best sounds with slow swipes of her tongue, moving in a circle around her clit. She keeps it up until Christine starts to whimper, then backs off, her tongue dipping lower. Christine’s thighs are shaking as Six brings her back from the edge, and she whines.

                “I was so close, you ass,” she complains, and Six tips her head back enough to answer.

                “That’s the point,” she says, one eyebrow raised, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

                “Maybe we should see how you like it,” she says, still a little breathless, still ready to scream because she’d been _so close_.

                Six doesn’t answer, only winks at her, but Christine rolls away before she can dive back in.

                “Hey!” she protests, but Christine only lays down on her back, spreading her legs.

                “If you’re gonna be mean like that, I can’t stay upright,” she says, and smirks. Six rolls her eyes and crawls forward.

                “I should make you wait just for that smart-ass remark,” she says, but she doesn’t, leaning back down and wrapping her lips around Christine’s clit before she can answer. She gets a litany of curses in response, and she presses her tongue against the tiny nub before dialing back the intensity again. She goes slow, this time, but eventually Christine is unraveling beneath her, begging as she slips two fingers inside.

                “Six, fuck, please let me come. Please,” she pleads, breathlessly, fingers twisted in the sheets. Her body is streaked with sweat, her new voice cracking. Six has lost count of how many times she’d brought Christine to the edge only to pull her back again. This time, though, she works her fingers in and out with no intention of stopping. She doesn’t use her mouth, still wants to drag this out as long as she can, because the noises spilling out of Christine’s mouth are making her wetter than she’s ever been. Christine screams, when she comes, like a dam has finally broken. She trembles, and Six slows her movements but doesn’t stop thrusting her fingers, working her through the aftershocks. She pulls her fingers out slowly as Christine goes still, eyes closed, breathing hard.

                Christine opens her eyes in time to see Six slip her glistening fingers into her mouth and lick them clean. “You’re brutal, Six,” she says, throwing her arm over her eyes. Six chuckles, pressing a kiss against her inner thigh, and sits up. There’s a hollow ache in her own stomach, and she can feel how slick she is.

                “Hey, come on, that’s gotta be one of the best orgasms you’ve had in a long time,” she says, grinning.

                “Yeah, yeah. You’re gonna have to wait a few minutes if you want my help to get off,” she answers, moving her arm to look up at her.

                “Oh, I don’t know. You afraid to get a little messy?” Six asks. Christine shakes her head curiously, watching intently as Six straddles her leg. She catches on quick when Six lowers herself down and moves her hips, rutting against her leg, one hand splayed out on Christine’s stomach to keep her balance. She speeds up, chasing that peak in a way she didn’t let Christine. She’s so close her entire middle aches with it, and finally, she comes, her juices soaking Christine’s leg. She lets out a shuddering gasp, falling forward, and Christine catches her.

                “I should have made you wait,” Christine breathes in her ear, and then they’re both giggling.

                “You’re not mean enough for that,” she says, and when she finally catches her breath she rolls off of her. Christine wipes her leg off with the blanket and slides off the bed, legs still a little unsteady.

                “Well? Aren’t you getting dressed? We should check in with Domino and see if he wants to stay in the Madre, and then get the hell out of Dodge. I want to go back to the Mojave. Never thought I’d miss all the dust or the sun, but I’m ready to go whenever you are,” she says. Six watches, leaning on her elbows, and Christine tosses her Pip-Boy onto the bed a few inches away.

                “So you really are coming with me?” she asks, tilting her head to the side as she fastens the device to her wrist. It’s weight is comforting, a familiar presence ever since she woke up on the operating table. Doc Mitchell had been real nice to give it to her. She thinks about Goodsprings, thinks about how she should visit. Maybe she’d take Katie, just the two of them, and show her that sometimes she wasn’t just an ass.

                “I was going to stay here. But you made me realize that I don’t want to,” she admits, and Six rolls off the bed, pulling her armor back on. It’s broken and battered from all that she’s put it through since she found it in the medical facility, and she’ll be glad to get her own clothes back, which she supposes are still in the bunker.

                “Well, that’s good. First order of business will be Novac. I’ve got some friends waiting for me there,” she says, pulling her hair back up and twisting it into a ponytail. She’ll be glad when she’s out of here, when she can take a bath and scrub the stench off of her skin and out of her hair.

                “Sounds good. But I’m letting you handle Domino. If he comes with us, make it clear that I’m not dealing with his bullshit the whole way back,” she says, grinning. Six stops to press a quick kiss against her lips before she gathers the rest of her things up.

                “Sure thing, babe,” she says, and then they step out into the hallways of the hotel, careful and quiet in case there are ghosts lurking.

* * *

                Katie finds that Veronica likes wine. She doesn’t know why Cliff has such ample stores in his stock, but Veronica likes to indulge, and she’ll often invite Katie up to Six’s room with her on her days off. They’ve gotten to know each other well enough- Veronica told Katie about a girlfriend the Brotherhood took from her, and Katie caved and told Veronica where she was from.

                They are sitting in Six’s room, the door open, the first stars just starting to shine, when Boone comes running in the door. There’s a childish excitement on his face that Katie hasn’t seen since he gave her the teddy bear (which she still sleeps with, most of the time, only putting it aside when she shares the bed with Boone).

                “Did something happen?” she asks, pausing mid-conversation. Veronica looks more amused than annoyed, which she’s thankful for.

                “There’s a red beret coming up the road,” he says, and it takes her a second to figure out what he’s saying.

                “You mean…?” she asks, a slow grin on her face.

                “Courier Six is coming home.”


End file.
